“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone" --Charles Bukowski

210 days sober “Are you sure you can smoke?” Declan asks me. It’s probably the fourth time he has asked me this in the ten minutes since we climbed into the cab of his truck, parked in the farthest corner of the senior lot. Even as he asks, he continues to break up the nugget of weed and pack the pieces into the speckled-blue glass pipe. I’m sure he’s going to smoke no matter what my answer is, as he rightfully should—it’s his birthday, after all. “I’m sure,” I say. “Only done it once since rehab, though, so a single hit might get me toasted.” Declan snorts. “Christ, I’ll start. I don’t want you fading out before I’m even high.” He raises the pipe to his lips, lights the bud, and takes a deep hit. His chest heaves as his lungs expand, and I’m pretty sure he won’t fault me for staring at his pecs as he moves. When he eventually exhales, he lets the smoke curl from his mouth so slowly, I think he must be trying to get me to stare. It would work, if I hadn’t already been watching. His mouth quirks into a brief, knowing smile before he takes his second hit. Only later, as he’s exhaling his third, does he hold out the pipe. Before I can accept it, he shies away with it and warns, “You’d better not be bullshitting me about being okay to do this. If you relapse and end up back in rehab because of this, I’ll—” “Dude, I told you. I’m completely okay with smoking up. I went to rehab because of my drinking and coke usage. And painkillers, and shit. Heavy stuff. I’m fine to smoke a bowl once every few months.” To illustrate my point, I take the pipe from him, put it to my lips, and light it. It’s a long hit, and whoever Declan buys from grows quality hydro. When I let the smoke out, it’s clouded around a laugh. “Fuck, Dec,” I say. “Warn a guy.” “It’s awesome, right?” Declan laughs. He takes the bowl, takes a hit, says around it, “I can’t even smoke a whole bowl by myself.” Exhale. “I can only do maybe… eight hits before I’m too high to do anything but, like… get Dominos delivered to the dorm and watch old episodes of Lost on my laptop.” I wrinkle my nose and take the bowl when he holds it out. “I never liked Lost.” “Me neither. That’s why I have to be high to watch it,” he says. “’S the only time that fucking show ever makes sense to me.” I choke on the smoke of my second hit because I’m too busy laughing to remember to hold it in. Declan closes his eyes and smiles. It isn’t until my third hit and his sixth that he sets the pipe in the cupholder and reaches for me, but from the moment his hand lands on my leg, he’s all in. He gives my knee an insistent tug, even as he slides across the bench seat so the steering wheel isn’t in his way. “Come here.” We’re already sitting shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, so there’s only one here he can be referring to. I crawl up onto my knees on the seat and swing a leg over his lap. He kisses me without any build-up or preamble, only the firm, certain pressure of his lips on mine. The truck is too small, or we’re both just too big—my head knocks against the roof of the cab a few times, and I’m debating the pros and cons of shoving him sideways, spreading him out over the bench and lying on top of him, when he breaks the kiss. “Last week, you said you wanted to fuck, but wouldn’t as long as I was sixteen. I’m seventeen now,” he says. His fingers are scratching at the back of my scalp, trying to find something to pull on, but my hair’s still way too short for that. Frustrated, he ends up moving both his hands to my jaw, clasping my face between his palms and tipping my head back so that he can get his mouth on my neck. At my noise of approval, he lifts his lips from my skin long enough to ask, “Are you still interested?”Yes, I want to say, grinding my ass down against his growing hard-on. But instead, I take a deep breath and make myself repeat the words Doc helped me come up with at my last therapy session. “I like you, and I’m attracted to you, and I want to sleep with you, but I don’t let people fuck me. So, if we’re going to do this, I think we need to talk our way through it first, because I can’t have sex unless I’m on top.” Declan leans back and tilts my head down again so that I can see his frown. “What do you mean?” I wish I could swallow my words, but it’s too late to take them back now. I say, “What you said, the last time we hooked up… gave me the impression that you thought you’d be on top. Fucking me. And I’m telling you right now, that’s not happening. I don’t do that.” “I don’t—” He looks entirely thrown by this; it’s probably the least composed I’ve ever seen him, other than the way he looks when he comes. “It hadn’t even crossed my mind that we’d do it any other way. After all, you’re the one who hooks up with guys on the regular. I assumed you had done that before.” I shift a little further back on his thighs; it’d probably be easier to think, if I couldn’t feel his erection. I wonder if it’d be too awkward to climb off. “I have,” I admit. “That’s, uh… how I know I’m not into it. I hate it, actually, I can’t get off on it. Can’t even get turned on. I’ve tried it with a few different guys, but only ever when I was so fucked up that I was barely conscious, or with… you know, guys I was serious with.” “Travis?” Declan guesses. I shrug. “Once. But I hated it so much, he had to stop after just a couple of minutes.” “Charlie’s brother?” Declan guesses again, and no. No, nope, we’re done. I slip sideways off his lap, back into my own seat, and say shortly, “Yeah, Dave fucked me. But it wasn’t good, and I don’t want to talk—look, this is sort of a ‘take it or leave it’ deal. Either you agree to bottom, or we don’t fuck. Those are your options here. You getting your dick in my ass is not on the table.” He takes the pipe from the cupholder and shuffles the bud with the tip of his pinkie finger before he takes another hit. We sit in silence for a while. I’m beginning to think that he assumes his silence is answer enough, but it turns out that he’s just considering his options. Eventually, he looks at me and says in an offhand tone, “It’s not like I’ve never done anything like that. I mean, I’ve never gotten fucked, not even close. But sometimes, I’ll hook up with a girl who tries to be, you know… daring or adventurous or whatever, and she’ll decide to put her finger up my ass while she’s blowing me or something.” He shuffles the bowl again, even though it doesn’t need it, and even though he doesn’t take a hit. He wrinkles his nose. “It’s not really my thing. I don’t hate it, and it doesn’t hurt. It isn’t that bad, but it isn’t good, either. Definitely nothing I’d get off on.” “That’s because girls are fucking stupid,” I say. I take the bowl from him and flick the lighter. It sparks, but doesn’t ignite. “They read all these articles in Cosmo that tell them they can please their man by shoving a finger up his ass when he’s not expecting it, or scraping their teeth on his shaft, or slathering his nuts in peanut butter and licking it off, or what-the-fuck-ever, but they don’t know how to do it right.” Declan stretches out over the seat, his legs folded up against the door and his head and shoulders pillowed on my lap. “I can’t think of a single way for someone to lick peanut butter off my balls and have it be ‘done right.’” “I meant they don’t know how to get a guy off right,” I say. “Not the peanut butter thing. That’d probably be weird no matter what.” He makes a noise of agreement. “I’m not surprised some moronic, hetero chick can’t get you off by fingering you, but I bet a gay guy could. Bet I could, ’m good at it.” He doesn’t make any noise this time. I flick the lighter again, but it’s still dead. “Do you have another light? This one’s empty.” “Check the glove compartment. There might be one there,” he answers. I have to lean over his face to reach the glovebox, and since my body is right there, he takes the opportunity to untuck my uniform shirt and suck a hickey onto my abs. I squirm, fully intending to push him onto the floor—or push his head towards my crotch, I’m not sure yet—but then I get the glovebox open, and my thought process is completely derailed, because when I lift up the vehicle registration, instead of finding a lighter, I find a Smith & Wesson 5906. I blink. “Oh.” “Hm?” Declan stops mouthing at my stomach and sits halfway up, propping himself up on one elbow and peering into the glovebox. “Oh, that. What, you’re surprised? You knew I had one.” “Yeah, I just didn’t realize it’d be here,” I say. “Usually, I take better care of it,” he says, sounding almost like an apology. “I keep it in its case, in my room. But somebody tipped me off to upcoming room inspections, so I had to move it. The case is still in the dorm, but I filled it with pens and staples and school junk so it looks like I’m just a weirdo who uses an old gun case for his school supplies. The pistol’s going to stay here until I’m sure it’s safe to move it back. Probably next week, while everybody else is home for spring break.” “You’re not going back home for the week?” I say. He shakes his head, flashes me a bland smile that neither of us pretends to believe is real. “Nope. It’d be stupid to fly to Nebraska and leave my truck here so I’m stranded without one for a week, and it’d be even stupider to waste all the time driving there just so I can be bored for a few days, turn around, and drive back. Same reason my grandparents beg out of coming to visit for Parents’ Day at the end of every April. Anyway, I like staying here, an hour outside the city. Especially since you, Javi, and Taylor all live in New York anyway, and Charlie’s right over in New Haven. I’m the only one who’s staying in the dorms for the week, but at least I can go hang out with people, if I want to.” “Sam and Steven?” I ask. Another head shake. “Steven’s from Maine, Sam’s from NorCal. They’re both going home for the week.” He reaches for the pistol. “You want to check it out?” I grab his wrist before he can make contact. “Uh, no, thanks. I’d rather not leave this truck with an extra hole in me. We’re both stoned as fuck. Playing with firearms is the quickest way to turn this evening into an after-school special.” Declan twists to roll his eyes at me. “Do you really think I’m that stupid? It’s not loaded, G. There’s no clip in the magazine, nothing in the chamber. I don’t even keep ammunition in the truck.” “Where do you keep that? Your room?” I ask. He shakes his head. “Patton weapons room. Nobody even notices an extra box of cartridges tucked in the back of the ammo shelves, and I just slip it out whenever I need it.” I snap the glovebox shut again and say, “Need it for… murdering people in the dark of the night?” “For target practice, you fucking idiot,” he says. “I like to go out to that clearing in the woods behind the party house the Ward girls have. Charlie and Javi come with me sometimes—we steal apples and oranges from the dining hall and line ‘em up on the picnic table, see how many we can hit from across the clearing. You should come with us sometime.” He gestures towards the glovebox. “I could see about getting you one of your own, if you wanted me to.” I look at him. He’s staring at my mouth, but not like he wants to kiss me—more like he wants to see the answer I give. At this point, I know Declan well enough to know the only right answer. “Definitely. Thanks.” He sits up, leans in to kiss me, but before he makes contact, I can’t resist adding, “Besides, if I recall, you once told me it turns you on to watch me shoot things.” “That was laser tag, and I was lying,” he says. Instead of kissing me, he gives a hard nip to my lower lip, then twists around until he can free his cell phone from his pocket. He sends a few quick texts, taps his thumb impatiently against the side of the phone, and smirks when it chimes with a reply. He shoves the phone back into his pocket and reaches for the door handle, then comes right back and rubs his palm over my buzzcut as an afterthought. “I’m heading out, but you should stick around campus until you sober up enough to drive.” Right—wouldn’t want to start cruising around in the Ferrari while I’m high off my ass, and risk taking out another vehicle the way some kid took out Jamie’s parents. But I’m still kind of stuck on the heading out part. I say, “Wait, where are you going?” “Walking over to Ward.” He gives me a kiss on the cheek and a smile that can only be described as dismissive. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a great mouth. But it’s my birthday, and I want to really fuck someone. I planned for that to be you, but if it can’t be, then I’m going to meet one of my girls.” “Seriously?” I can’t stop myself from saying. “Yes, seriously,” Declan says. He roots around in his pocket for a minute before surfacing with his keys and pressing them into my palm. “Here, take these. You can hang around in my room while you’re waiting to sober up. Javi’s probably there, but if he’s not, drop my keys off with Charlie or Taylor before you leave.” He slips out of the truck and shuts the door, starts striding off towards the path through the woods to Ward Academy before he pauses—almost trips, really—and turns to add, “I’ll see you around. And don’t forget—my party is this Friday night, out at the house. I want you to come.” “If you want me to come, maybe you should stop blue-balling me,” I call after him. He laughs, but turns and keeps walking.212 days sober My phone starts buzzing halfway through chem lab on Thursday. When I take it from my pocket to check the caller ID, it’s a number I don’t recognize. Usually, I would ignore it, but Charlie’s being a control freak about today’s assignment, and I haven’t been allowed to touch anything all period. I scribble my name on the sign-out sheet like I’m heading to the bathroom, then slip into the nearest stairwell to answer the call. “Hello?” “Hello, may I speak to…” There’s a pause, like the man on the other end is checking a list. “Garen Anderson?” “Speaking,” I say—snap, I guess. I’m going to be pissed, if I find out that I just left class to chat up a telemarketer. The voice warms as it replies, “Hello, Garen, my name’s Ken. I’m the talent manager at Rush. I’m calling about the application you submitted to our website last week.” Without thinking, I say, “Application is a very generous word for it. If I remember correctly, I sent you five nearly-naked pictures of myself and wrote ‘deepthroating’ under my ‘special skills’.” The second the words are out, I cover my mouth with my palm, like that will do anything to help me take them back. Christ, no wonder people tell me I’ll never be able to get a real job, if this is how I talk to prospective employers. To my intense relief, Ken chuckles. “Well, you definitely caught my attention with that, especially considering that one of our current dancers, Paul, recommended you personally. I’m calling to let you know that you seem like you could be a great addition to our staff. We have about thirty different applicants, all of whom are applying for the same six dancing positions. Our standard practice would be to have all of you come in on the same night so that we can meet you face-to-face. We’ll send a few people home right then, if they don’t seem like they’d be a good fit, but the rest will be going into their audition.” “An audition,” I echo. “Are you talking about my dancing or my special skills?” “Maybe both, if you play your cards right,” he purrs. Thank god this is a phone call, because if he could see the revolted face I make at that, there’s no way he’d ever hire me. I should probably try to learn a better poker face, if I’m aiming to work at a place that clearly considers sexual harassment a goal, not a problem. Ken clears his throat, and says, in a more business-appropriate tone, “You’d be working a full, six-hour shift, from ten at night to four the next morning, and you’d be receiving all the standard dancer perks—full use of our dressing rooms to get ready, free drinks all night, and you get to keep any tips you receive. I’ll be in the club the entire time, as will Jonathan and Mikael, the two owners. We’ll be observing all of the dancers to see who stands out in a good way, who stands out in a bad way. At the end of the night, the three of us will conference and decide who our six new dancers will be. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in trying out?” “Absolutely,” I say, but the word feels strange in my mouth, like I’m speaking too quickly. I think part of my brain might still be stuck on free drinks all night. I give myself a quick shake and add, “Thank you, that sounds awesome. What day should I come in?” “Next Friday, the twentieth. And we’ll need you to show up no later than eight o’clock. You can get here in street clothes, but you need to bring your own costume to dance in, as well as a photo ID and a printed copy of your application, including photos. If you plan to store your stuff in one of the lockers in the dressing room, I’d suggest you bring your own lock, because we don’t provide any, and I can’t guarantee one of the other dancers won’t try to borrow some of your valuables. Do you have any questions for me?” When I confirm that I do not, he says, “Great. I look forward to meeting you next Friday,” and hangs up before I can return the sentiment, however much I wouldn’t mean it. I slip back into my classroom and throw myself back down at my lab table, slinging an arm around Javi’s shoulders and announcing to the group at large, “Guess who has a one-in-five chance of becoming a sex worker next week!”Seven months sober The Ward party house is a two-story home halfway between the Patton and Ward campuses. Every spring, the graduating seniors who own it pass along the lease to the raddest chicks in the junior class, carrying on the real tradition that unites our schools: the ruling seniors of Ward provide the house we all party in, and the ruling seniors of Patton provide the booze to go in it. This year, that apparently means the Whitman squad, something nobody bothers to fucking tell me until I’m being forced to help Charlie and Declan load a couple of kegs into the bed of Dec’s truck. “You boys having a party?” the liquor store clerk grunts at us. His name tag identifies him as Brian, and he keeps shooting suspicious looks at Declan, whose fake ID brands him as five full years older than he actually is. “Yeah, we are,” I say, counting out enough bills to cover the kegs and setting them on the tailgate. “Well, our fraternity is.” The bullshit assurance that we’re not in high school is enough to make Brian breathe a sigh of relief as he scoops up the money. “Cool, cool. Which one?” “Sigma Chi,” I say. It’s the only frat I know the name of, and I’m only aware of their existence because Travis told me some dude-bro in a ball cap cornered him outside his philosophy class the other night and told him he should totally think about pledging next fall, brah. I turn to the other two and ask, “Do we want to get anything harder than beer, you guys?” Charlie shrugs and hops down from the truck bed. “No, we keep the bar at the house pretty well-stocked.” “Did we restock the Malibu after the last party?” Declan asks as he shuts the tailgate. “Aubrey will spend the whole night bitching if she doesn’t have a steady stream of Bay Breezes, and I’m not in the mood to listen to it.” “As opposed to all the nights when you’re so willing to listen to girls’ complaints?” Charlie says. I push off the side of the truck and head for the door of the liquor store. “I’ll get another bottle, but one of you guys has to text Aubrey and tell her she’s on her own for the cranberry and pineapple juice.” Brian follows me back into the store and points me towards the aisle where I can find the coconut rum. I make it halfway to the Malibu display before my heart starts to feel heavy. Five feet shy of my goal, I pause. I look around. The aisle isn’t just coconut rum—it’s all rum. Light, dark, gold, flavored, spiced, overproof. Myers, Bacardi, Pyrat, Prichard’s, El Dorado, Havana Club, Diplimatico. Less than a foot away from me, right at eye level, there’s an entire row of Bacardi 151 bottles, and I can feel the phantom burn in my throat, like I’ve just swallowed a whole bottle of it. It hurts as much as the real thing did, when I relapsed in September. I shuffle forward a few more steps, pick up the biggest bottle of Malibu they sell, and hug the white, plastic jug to my chest, like it’ll serve as a barrier between me and the things I want to drink. I don’t want to pass the 151 again, so I loop around the end of the display with the intention of sneaking up the next aisle to get to the front counter. Instantly, I realize this is an even worse mistake, because now I’m in the whiskey aisle. And it hits me where I live. Even from the end of the aisle, I can already pick out the section with all the different kinds of Jack Daniel’s—my poison of choice, back when I was actually allowed to poison myself when I wanted to. Single Barrel, Tennessee Honey, Gentleman Jack, Old No. 7, Green Label. Every single kind, mixed with pop, on the rocks, straight, it doesn’t matter, I want it all. I grit my teeth and take a step forward, and there’s Jameson. I take another step, and there’s Dewar’s. Another, and it’s Diageo. Another, and it’s Johnnie Walker. I stop. The labels are a lined up in a rainbow. Red, Black, Double Black, Green, Gold, Blue. It’s this last one I can’t stop looking at. Two years ago, my seventeenth birthday happened to fall on Easter Sunday, and almost all the other Patton boys went home for it. Jamie’s parents wanted him to fly back to Georgia, but he refused to be anywhere without me for my birthday weekend, even if that meant forcing a Jewish boy to celebrate Easter with him. We collected a bunch of hollow plastic eggs, divided them by color, and filled them with treats—Adderall, condoms, tiny bags of coke, Percocet, dimebags of weed, and (to my immense pride at my own ingenuity) a travel-sized packet of flavored lube with a note that said this coupon can be redeemed for one filthysloppyawesome rimjob. I hid all the pink and orange eggs I’d filled, he hid all the blue and green, and we went on a campus-wide hunt that lasted all afternoon. When we finally got back to our dorm, we dipped into our spoils—Jamie immediately redeemed his coupon—and I was finally allowed to open my present: a meticulously-wrapped bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. We spent the entire evening playing around in bed. Jamie cued up his favorite old movies on his laptop, and I teased him about his obsessive crush on Cary Grant; we split the Scotch between us, taking long, sloppy sips right from the bottle and lapping the spilled drops from each other’s mouths. It might have been the best birthday I’ve ever had in my life. Hands shaking, I take a bottle of the Johnnie Walker Blue from the self and head to the register. Brian the clerk rings me up and nods to the second bottle. “Good stuff, huh?” “Yeah,” I say hoarsely, counting out more of my money and pressing the stack into his hand. “It’s great stuff.” “You need a bag?” he asks as he hands me my change. I shake my head, grab one bottle in each hand, and go for the door. The truck is already running, and Declan is behind the wheel, Charlie standing next to the open passenger door so I can climb up into the middle of the bench seat. “Took you long enough,” Declan says, but he shuts right up when I hand him the bottle of Scotch. “Happy birthday, you little shit,” I say. “Unless you want to keep bitching, in which case, I can totally find someone else to give this—” “Don’t you dare,” he says. He unbuckles his seatbelt and hip-checks me back across the bench into the passenger seat. He leans around me and says, “Charlie, go around. You’re driving now.” Charlie rolls his eyes and shuts my door, then trots towards the front of the truck. The second he looks away, Declan lurches forward and kisses the corner of my mouth. “Thanks, Anderson.” “No problem,” I say, and I want to keep kissing him, but Charlie pops open the driver’s side door and slips behind the wheel. Declan cracks open the bottle of Scotch, and I roll down my window so I won’t have to smell it. Declan has made a pretty serious dent in the bottle by the time we pull up to the party, which is teeming with Ward girls and… more Ward girls. Dec disappears into the party at once, leaving Charlie and me to recruit Steven and Taylor to help us haul the kegs inside. “Nobody told me this party was going to be such a fuckin’ taco fest,” I mutter to Taylor, who—as a fellow faggot—should at least sympathize with me on this. He clearly doesn’t, if his laughter is any indication. He says, “Yeah, that’s what happens when Declan gets to make the invite list. His strategy is pretty much to invite all the girls he wants to fuck, plus the six guys he’s friends with.” “There are other dudes here, though,” I say, gesturing to some random guy I’ve never met before. Random Guy is the lone bro in the cluster of females on the porch; he has his arm around one girl’s shoulders. Taylor shrugs. “Some of the girls bring their boyfriends along. Doesn’t really do anything to discourage Dec, but that’s between him, the girls, and their boys. Here, grab the other end of this one.” We cart the keg into the house, where we’re greeted by the gleeful cheers of a handful of girls. Taylor steers us into the kitchen, where a plastic tub full of ice is waiting. We’ve barely had time to pack the keg into the tub and tap it before a line of girls with Solo cups starts forming. The first girl makes exactly one attempt to fill her cup before she starts pouting at me. “I can’t do it,” she says. “Can you help me, please?” “Sure, you lazy bitch,” I say, but I say the words with a bright smile and fill her cup for her, so she seems to take it as a joke. I end up playing kegmaster for the next twenty minutes, filling cup after cup for girl after girl. At the end of the line, I find myself face to face with Aubrey, the girl who sent me a Valentine’s bear to inform me that she wouldn’t say no to a threesome with me and Declan. It’s dark out, but she’s wearing her Ray-Bans anyway, like she was at the hookah lounge that night in February. She hooks an arm around my neck and smacks a kiss to my cheek. “I heard you’ve got my ’Bu, boo,” she says. “Wanna continue playing barkeep long enough to make me an extra-strong drink?” “No, but I have a feeling that you’re going to make me,” I say. “You bring the juice?” She retrieves a jug each of pineapple juice and cranberry juice from the fridge. I paw through the cabinets until I find a cocktail shaker, then pour equal parts of the pineapple, cranberry, and coconut rum into it and give it a few seconds’ hard shake before straining it over ice in a Solo cup. Aubrey takes a slug of it, sighs, and says, “That’s perfect.” “My drinks always are,” I say. She tugs me towards the sound of dance music and says, “C’mon, we’re all in the living room. That’s where the fun is.” The ‘we’ in question is apparently the same crowd who went to the hookah lounge. My squad, Javi’s girlfriend, her friends. I can’t remember half their names, but they all greet me enthusiastically, so I pretend to give a shit. The only one who’s missing is Declan; I can’t help but glance around for him. Next to me, Aubrey laughs. “Sorry, babe, he’s already found his first conquest for the evening,” she says. She nods in the direction of the sound system, and I turn. Declan’s back is to me, but he’s the only ginger in the room, so it’s not like I can mistake him for someone else. He’s talking to some girl with bleached blond hair and a lowcut top. He says something, and she laughs. He says something else, and she nods. She darts around him and heads for the stairs, shooting him a coy glance over her shoulder. Instead of following her directly, he takes the long way around the room, wandering right towards where our group is gathered in the corner. Before I can say a single word to him, he slips a hand into my jacket, takes a condom from the inner pocket, and claps me on the shoulder. “Thanks, buddy. Enjoy the party.” “Enjoy your slut,” I say, and he laughs, disappears up the stairs after the girl. I make a face. Steven claps me on the shoulder too and says, “Sorry, man. But on the bright side, Dec’s probably going to get his ass beat tonight, ‘cause that was Tamara Baylour, and I’m pretty sure her boyfriend’s around here somewhere.” “I don’t care,” I say immediately. Bullshit—I really fucking care. “Wait, why the hell are you saying sorry to me?” Javi snorts. “G, you should probably just let it go.” “Let what go?” I grumble, unable to stop myself from twisting to glance at the stairs. “The whole, you know…” He gestures to the stairs and gives me a smile that’s more like a wince. “Crush that you have. On Dec?” I immediately look away, but the first person my eyes land on is Jenn. She’s wearing a grim expression, with a faint flush on her cheeks, and suddenly, I remember the sounds I heard her making in the hookah lounge bathroom, when Declan was fucking her in the stall. She got further with him that night than I’ve ever managed, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t really bothered to talk to her much since then. And it hits me—everyone in this group must think I’m even more pathetic than the string of girls who Declan has screwed and gotten bored of. My face heats up, and I look away from Jenn, like that’ll make me any less red. “Go fuck yourself, Javi. I don’t have a crush on anyone. Especially not Campbell.” “Look, I’m not trying to—” “Leave it, Javier,” Vanessa says sharply, and he rolls his eyes, but falls silent like a good, pussy-whipped boy. Jenn finishes her cup of beer and grabs my wrist, even though we’re nowhere near well-acquainted enough for her to be grabbing at me. “Come on. I’ll get another drink, and then we’ll go dance. We can be the ‘I like a dude who’s totally boning someone else right now’ club.” “Are you kidding, Jenn?” Sam laughs. “We’ve all seen how you like to dance. Something tells me that Garen isn’t too interested in having you rub your ass all over his crotch.” “That’s pretty much the point. I’d like a chance to dance up on a guy who isn’t going to pop a fucking boner in the middle of it, like some people always do, Samuel,” Jenn says, giving him the most judgmental look she can muster before dragging me off to refill her cup from the keg.

Sam wasn’t kidding; dancing with Jenn is a lot like getting a lapdance while standing, and her movements only become more obscene the drunker she gets. She’s delighted to discover that I can dance, and even more delighted to discover that—true to her suspicions—I’m not even remotely aroused by her grinding against me.

“Look!” she slurs at our friends during our fourth song together, stepping away from me to stare gleefully at my crotch. “Look, he doesn’t care even a little bit! Not one little bit! It’s like I’m not even here.”

I kind of wish she wasn’t here. I don’t fucking know her, and she’s putting her hands on me way more than I’m comfortable with. She might be trying to cheer me up, but it’s not fucking working. It’s just pissing me off. The second she goes to refill her drink yet again, I cut back through our group of friends. Charlie’s dancing with Kaitlyn, and I stop next to him just long enough to pick his pocket for his cell phone before I slip out the nearest door and onto the porch. I take a deep breath of the cool night air, but it just feels frozen in my lungs. It doesn’t calm my anger at all. I bring up a new text to Declan on Charlie’s phone and start hammering out a message so quickly, I’m worried I might break the keys.

how’s the skank? I type. whats she doing, sucking you off? are you fucking her? is she good?

It’s a minute or two before the reply comes. wtf, walczyk, are you high?? Almost immediately after, Declan adds, w/e you’re on has gotta be great shit, tho, make sure you save some for me.

this isnt fucking charlie, this is G, i stole his cell, i still dont have your goddamn #, I send, then, how is she? whatever slut you brought up there w/ you. does she even know what she’s doing?

He replies, hope you plan to delete these messages b4 you give charlie back his phone.

All I can think to send in reply is a random smash of letters. When he doesn’t respond to that, I keep typing out my message with clumsy, trembling fingers. this is the same chick you nailed on your birthday, isnt it? the one you went to after you & i stopped what we were doing? hope she was worth it but im betting she wasnt. a girl like that could never be as good to you as i could be. whats she doing now? is she sucking your cock?

His next message comes in two parts. The first is only a three-word message, see for yrself. The second is a picture. I nearly break the phone. I squeeze my eyes shut for a long moment until I can calm myself to look at it again without pitching the phone across the yard. The picture is shockingly well lit; I guess Declan likes to fuck with the lights on. The blond girl is on her knees in front of him, and she’s barely sucking his dick. Only the head is in her mouth, and she looks like she’s forgetting to cover her teeth with her lips. There isn’t nearly enough spit, enough slickness, enough—Christ, enough passion. Who gives a fucking neat blowjob?

I type, your girl is pathetic. cant believe she has a chance with you & shes wasting it on such a bullshit blowjob. if that was me, if you were with me right now, id have you down my fucking throat. thats how you like it, i know it is, you like fucking my mouth, you like feeling me swallow your cum, like it when I taste you.

she’s getting pissd at me for being on my cell while she’s goingg down on me, he texts, words starting to get messy in his haste to reply. Dont have the <3 to tell her I’m only getting off bc of the fuckin perverted shit my squadmate is saying to me.

forget her. come downstairs & find me, we can go to your truck & park somewhere, we can fuck around. I slump against the side of the house and wait for a reply, but one doesn’t come. I balance the phone on the porch railing so that I can rub both palms over my face. If only the air were a little bit colder, it might be enough to make me snap out of this bullshit mood I’m in. But instead, I just continue to feel like all my skin is stretched too tight. The phone beeps on the rail, and I scramble to read the text, then immediately wish I hadn’t.

I shove Charlie’s cell into my pocket and turn around so that I can rest my forehead against the wall. Fuck. I don’t know why this is getting to me as badly as it is. It’s not like Declan is the first guy I’ve hooked up with who fucked some chick instead of getting with me again later. Jamie did it for years. Travis has even done it. I shouldn’t be so bothered by this—logically, I know that—but I can’t stop thinking about the fact that some random slut with a boyfriend can come up to Dec at a party and get in bed with him five minutes later, even though it has taken me three months to get nothing more than a couple of handjobs.

With a heavy sigh, I retreat to the house again, but only make it a dozen steps inside before a voice calls out, “Garen! C’mere, I want to talk to you. I have someone for you to meet.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that obnoxious voice practically shrieking my name, but it’s the first time I’ve been clothed for it—it’s not nearly as enjoyable as it used to be. I turn so that I can aim my grimace at Ryan Marten. “Who am I supposed to be meeting? I thought you decided on Valentine’s Day that you hate me, or whatever.”

“I did,” Ryan says, slinking towards me. He’s dragging some guy by the hand—not a Patton boy, though. Some random femme kid with a tight shirt that doesn’t quite meet the top of his jeans. Ryan pushes him at me and continues, “I did decide I hate you, but I don’t anymore, because I don’t even care enough to hate you. I found someone new, alright? This is Mitchell, and he’s my boyfriend now.”

“Okay…?” I say very slowly. Mitchell is a skinny, tiny thing, barely taller than Ben is. He’s glowering at me, one of his slender arms looped around Ryan’s waist. Then, it hits me, and a surprised bark of laughter bursts from my throat. “Wait, is this—are you trying to start fag drama with me right now? Am I supposed to get all pissy and territorial and try to win you back? We never dated, dude, I just fucked you in the shower a couple times a week.”

Mitchell the Micro-Queer tries to get up in my face—fails spectacularly, considering his size—and says, “Listen, asshole. Don’t just come up in here and think you can talk to my boyfriend like that—”

“Come up in here and—are you fucking kidding me?” I snap. “This is Declan’s birthday party. Last time I checked, I’m friends with him, and Ryan isn’t. You little shits weren’t even invited tonight. Besides, your boy’s the one who called my fuckin’ name—not like it’s the first time, though, and I’m guessing that that’s what this is really about, huh?”

Over the top of Mitchell’s head, I can see that my friends have noticed the trouble I’ve gotten myself into. I shoot Javi a wide-eyed stare, but he just gives me a cheerful wave and lets the events continue to unfold.

“You really can’t,” I say, then add to his boyfriend, “Call off your bitch, Ryan. If he hits me, I’m going to fucking waste him. You know he won’t fare well in a fight against me.”

Mitchell crosses his arms. “Well, you treated my guy like shit. Trust, I know what a dick you were to him, which means you and I need to settle the score right now.”

His stupid Mighty Mouse rant is making me want to hit him, but I can’t. I really would destroy him with a single punch, and I wouldn’t put it past Ryan to call the cops in the middle of party, just to cause a scene. The last thing I need is to get the party house shut down and all my friends arrested for underage drinking. The real problem here is that I only know two ways to solve conflict, and since fighting is out…

“I’m pretty sure we can find another way to settle the score, baby,” I say to Mitchell, reaching up to curl a hand over the back of his neck and tug him closer. “Do you want to have a turn with me?”

Ryan wedges himself between me and his boyfriend and slaps me across the face—and it really is a slap, not a punch, so it barely even hurts. I laugh, and he looks even more pissed off. But Mitchell… Mitchell looks uncertain. He sneaks a glance at Ryan, then looks back at me. Now we’re making progress. I settle one hand on Mitchell’s hip, one hand on Ryan’s, and step closer to both of them at once. Neither tries to move away from me.

“Don’t worry, guys,” I say quietly. “You’ll both be there. Not trying to split you up, just trying to even the score.”

“You’re horrible,” Ryan huffs, and I shoot him a smile that’s wide and raw enough to make him shiver under my hand.

“Come on, sweetheart. You know that’s not true. Shouldn’t your boy have a chance to find that out for himself?” I sneak a quick kiss to Ryan’s cheek, then, before either of them can pitch a fit over that, I veer back towards Mitchell, close enough to bump my nose against his. “You’re not really pissed about how I treated him, ‘cause I didn’t really do anything wrong. We fucked around a bit, and it didn’t work out, but it’s not like I tried to hurt his feelings. So there’s gotta be another reason you’re pissed. And I’m guessing it’s ‘cause you’re jealous.”

“Get over yourself,” Ryan says, but his voice is as soft as it might be if he were trying not to scare off an animal. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to finding a way in, so I take it—my hand jumps from Mitchell’s hip to his jaw so that I can pull him forward into a kiss.

Ryan’s breath hitches, but the real reaction comes from across the room. Taylor calls to me, “Are you trying to get your ass beat?”

As embarrassed as I know I should be by his attention, I can’t help but feel sort of pleased with myself. If I can pull this off, I won’t be downstairs when Declan finally returns from nailing his skank; I’ll be upstairs, nailing a skank or two of my own, and our friends will be down here, talking about it, and he’ll realize that I might want him, but I’m not going to wait around like all of those desperate, pathetic girls who chase after him.

Almost in unison, Ryan’s hand lands on my ass, and Mitchell’s lips part just enough for our tongues to brush. I smile into the kiss, then break it to say, “You’re not going to beat my ass, are you, Mitchell? You’re going to let me bring you and your boy upstairs, and you’re going to let me fuck you. He’s already had you—only seems fair that you get a turn, right? I mean, I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us.”

Mitchell takes another peek at his boyfriend, but Ryan is still watching me. That seems to be answer enough. Mitchell grabs one of my hands and one of Ryan’s, tugs us both towards the stairs, and says, “Let’s go.”

“Let’s,” I agree, pushing them ahead of me.

Halfway up the stairs, I hear Taylor calling after me, “This is bullshit, Anderson! Someday, you’re going to meet somebody you can’t fuck your way out of fighting!”

“No, I’m probably not!” I shout back. Just for show, I put a hand on Ryan’s ass and push him up the last few steps.

In the upstairs hall, I have to try three different doorknobs before I find one that’s unlocked, and even that one has a couple inside. A guy and a girl are making out on the bed, but it seems like that’s as far as it’s going to go. I roll my eyes and say, “If you’re not fucking, get out. You can make out in the hallway or something. Grow up.”

“Fuck you, dude, we were here first,” the boy protests.

I grab Ryan by the t-shirt and shove him in the direction of the bed. “Well, the three of us are about to fuck. If you and your girl want to keep necking like middle-schoolers, go ahead. But I’m warning you: it’s about to get loud in here.”

“The three of you?” the girl says, her eyes bugging out a bit. She looks like she’s about to vomit, but I can’t tell if it’s because she’s drunk, or because I’m threatening to start an orgy on the bed with her.

“Yes, the three of us, bitch,” Mitchell snaps. “So, unless you plan to—”

I cut off the rest of his sentence with another kiss, and the breeders scramble to get out of the room. Mitchell wriggles out of my grip long enough to go lock the door, and by the time he returns to the bed, I’ve got Ryan’s pants halfway off. At his bewildered look, I say shortly, “I’m efficient. And if I’m being completely honest with both of you, I’m mostly doing this to piss off this hetero guy I wanna bang.”

It’s the sort of confession I should’ve kept in my mind, and I half-expect them both to get pissed enough to walk out on me now. Instead, Ryan beams at me, like he’s never been more flattered than he is to be used as a tool to make someone else jealous. Mitchell perks up, too, and says, “Is he at this party? Because if so, you should text him and see if you can get him to go into the next room over. I’m a screamer, and if you remind me what you name is, I can totally help you out.”

“His name is Garen, sweetie,” Ryan says.

I drop my eyes so that neither of them will see me rolling them, but then a thought occurs to me. I… could text him. Slowly, I take Charlie’s phone out of my pocket and say, “If I ask you guys to let me send this guy pictures of the three of us together, am I going to get slapped again?”

“Oooh, that’s good,” Mitchell says, shoving his jeans down to his ankles and hopping right out of them. He climbs onto the bed on his hands and knees, then pushes his briefs down and arches his back so that his bare ass is presented to me. He looks over his shoulder. “Hey, would you mind forwarding them to me, though? I want to put them on Instagram.”

I squint at him. “You’re not putting pictures of my dick on Instagram, dude. I don’t—that would probably violate the Terms of Service Agreement anyway.”

“You’re right,” Ryan sighs. He beckons me closer. “Come on. You guys start, and I’ll make sure I get at least a few good shots. I’ve totally perfected the art of the mid-coitus selfie. You should see how many new tumblr followers I get on Topless Tuesdays.”

He takes about twenty different pictures in varying states of obscenity. One of me stripping Mitchell down, two of Mitchell getting me out of my clothes, too. Two of me sucking him off, two of me fingering him open, one of me pushing inside. Half a dozen of us fucking, impatiently shifting to new positions when Ryan directs. I drag Ryan into the next four shots; he sprawls out on the pillows, halfway propped up against the headboard with me between his legs, my back against his chest while Mitchell rides my dick. I’m almost impressed by the way Ryan manages to get all three of us in the same shot.

Impressed, but not aroused.

This isn’t sex—it’s payback to Declan, payoff to Mitchell and Ryan. I’m not sure I’m even enjoying it. My dick is hard, sure, and I’m probably going to come at some point, but it doesn’t actually feel good. It just feels like it’s… happening. It’s happening, and I guess it’s happening to me, but I can’t bring myself to have any greater connection to the experience than that. I just lie there, one hand twisted around to jerk Ryan off against the small of my back, watching while Mitchell bounces around on top of me. When he starts to get frustrated and impatient, I plant my feet on the mattress for some leverage to thrust up into him.

He moans, and it’s kind of annoying.

Both of them come before I do, splattering all over my back and my chest. I don’t really want to be here anymore, but I can’t think of a good enough excuse to escape, so I pull out of Mitchell’s ass, yank the condom off, and get myself off with my own hand, as quickly as possible. In order to even make that happen, I have to close my eyes and tap into my highlight reel of the hottest things that have ever happened to me--

The noise Jamie made the first time I managed to successfully deep throat him. That guy I met in Paris who asked me to fuck him on the balcony of my hotel room in the middle of the day. The thirtysomething with a wedding ring and a kink for dirty talk, who happened to meet me at the exact right time in my poor-little-rich-boy-with-authority-issues phase for me to be turned on instead of creeped out when he told me to call him daddy. The way Ben gets boneless and glassy-eyed and malleable if you scratch him hard enough; the way Declan gets rough and impatient and frustrated if your grip isn’t tight enough to make him come when he wants to.

And Travis. Kissing him against the side of Blaire Kennedy’s house on Halloween, his stupid mask digging into my cheek and his hands tight on my hips. Sucking him off the night he turned seventeen, the first time he ever got off with another person. Rutting up against him in the service alley behind the Daily Grind because I couldn’t stay away after he texted me, I know we’ve only been going out for a week, but would it be okay if I maybe jerked you off tonight? Talking him off after going to the club on his birthday, seeing him come without ever putting a hand on himself. Making love to him for the first time in almost a year, curling up in bed with him and doing all the things I thought I’d never get to do again. Travis. Christ, Travis.

I come, and immediately wish that I hadn’t.

Ryan gets a picture of that, too. He and Mitchell are still scrolling through the shots, surveying their handiwork as I claw my way off the bed and use the corner of the sheet to clean my skin—party house rules require everyone to strip the beds they fuck on, anyway, so it’s not like I’m making an unnecessary mess. I kick the other two off the bed long enough to get the sheets bundled up and shoved into the hamper. By the time I’m dressed, Ryan has deleted all but the three best pictures—one of me stripping, one of me and Mitchell, and one of all three of us.

I send them to Declan and hang around for a couple minutes, watching the other guys get dressed and waiting for a reply, but it never comes. I have never been so wholly unsatisfied. Without bothering to say goodbye, I trudge back out to the party to find my friends. Taylor is the first one I run into, right near the bottom of the stairs. He snags my arm and says, “Hey, most everybody else is out back. And I think Dec was looking for you?”

My pulse jumps. I thank Taylor and press my way through the rest of the party, out onto the back porch. Sure enough, most of our group is gathered there, smoking—Javi, Vanessa, Steven, Aubrey, Jenn. Declan is perched on the porch railing, leaning back enough that he’s in danger off falling off onto the lawn, even though he’s got a hand wrapped around one of the posts connecting the rail to the roof. He’s further gone than he was when he went upstairs earlier; his amber eyes are glazed over, and he wobbles a little every time he turns his head to look at whichever friend is speaking. When he catches sight of me, he crooks a finger at me and mouths, get over here.

I lope across the porch and say brightly, “Oh, hey! Did you get my texts?”

“You’re a monster,” he says. His tone might be stern, if he could stop himself from laughing. “What, is this a thing we’re doing now? The picture thing?”

“You started it, not me,” I point out, at the same moment that Javi asks, “What picture thing?”

“Nothing,” Declan says around a sly smile that makes his words completely unconvincing.

He’s pointedly silent for a long while after that, until Javi rolls his eyes and shifts the rest of the group further down the porch to give Declan and I a bit of privacy. Dec appears extremely satisfied with himself. He tries to adjust his position on the rail and nearly pitches over the back of it. I catch him by the elbow and haul him off the railing, onto his feet. “You’re going to crack your head open, you idiot.”

“You’re going to crack your head open,” he mimics, but before I can berate him for his comeback failures, he adds, “The picture thing—that shouldn’t become a thing. At least, not for your sake. I’d always win.”

“Oh, really? Because tonight, I’m pretty sure I saw your high card, and raised you a pair of queens,” I say.

He narrows his eyes at me. “Night isn’t over yet. There’s still time for me to get a full house.”

“I don’t even understand what that would be in the context of this metaphor,” I say, laughing. “What, a fivesome? Really, Dec? You think you’re going to go find four girls who’ll fuck you at once?”

He points over at Aubrey, then at Jenn, and says, “One and two. Give me five minutes, and I can find at least two more. Maybe three.”

“Motherfucker, can you count? A poker hand is five cards.” I hold up one hand and wiggle all my digits at him. “A fivesome. You only need four girls, plus yourself. You don’t need a river girl, this isn’t Texas Hold ‘em.”

Declan gives me a very serious look and says, “I could probably find a Texan, if you really want me to.”

I really want you, Dec, I almost blurt out. He’s got this solemn, determined set to his jaw right now, but he’s still tipping sideways enough that I feel compelled to put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. It’s… cute, and that’s not really a word I’d use to describe him most of the time. I duck my head and say, “Nah, we’ll call it a draw for tonight. I mean, I obviously won, considering I got one hundred percent more ass than you. But it’s your birthday party, so your lame, sloppy hookup counts for double.”

“Sloppy? You didn’t seem to think I was sloppy when you were—” Declan at least has the presence of mind to glance over towards our friends, who are still chatting only six or so feet away. He straightens up and angles his body so that his back is to them, leans in closer and says quietly into my ear, “When you were trying to get me to bail on Tamara to come hook up with you instead.”

I feel something nudging against my boot. I glance down just in time to see him kick my feet further apart so that he can slip one of his legs between mine and press his thigh to my groin. I give a considering hum, then say, “Well, if you feel like you’ve got something to prove, I’m sure I could be persuaded to change my opinion.”

“Do you want to go park somewhere?” he asks, and I nod without really deciding to. He squeezes my elbow and steps back. “We need to get the keys from Charlie, and then we’ll go.”

I nod again, just as the phone in my pocket starts screeching—Charlie’s phone, not mine. I root around to find it; Sam’s name comes up on the caller ID, so I answer, “Hello?”

But it’s Charlie’s voice, not Sam’s that comes through the line. “Listen, asshole, I don’t know who this is, but I want my fucking phone back. You’d better be—”

“Calm your tits, Walczyk,” I interrupt. “It’s Garen, I’ve got your phone. I needed to borrow it for a min—”

“Let me talk to him,” Declan insists, snatching the phone out of my hand before I can reply. He holds it to one ear and plugs the other. “Charlie? Chaaaarlie. Come outside, we’re on the back porch. ’M sorry Anderson took your phone, he needed to talk to me about—what? ’Cause he doesn’t have my number, dumbass. Now get out here.”

He hangs up, and it’s only a minute later that Charlie comes storming out of the house, Sam trailing after him.

“Because I don’t want you to pick my fucking pocket every time you decide you need to talk to Campbell,” he says. I hand over my phone, and he dials in Declan’s number, repeats the process with mine in Dec’s before he continues bitching, “I didn’t even realize you did it until half an hour after you’d already gone upstairs. I feel violated.”

Sam shrugs. “In all fairness, it’s not like this is the first time G has had his hand in a Walczyk boy’s pants.”

I grimace. “Can we not bring that up, please?”

“Charles. You still have my truck keys, right?” Declan says.

“Yeah, right here,” Charlie says, patting his jeans pocket. “Why, you want to head out?” Before Declan can try to fumble his way through an explanation of the fact that no, he just wants to go somewhere with me for a few minutes, Charlie turns and says to the others, “Hey, we’re going to head on back to school, alright?”

Declan digs an elbow into my ribs, like this is somehow all my fault. There isn’t any way to beg off now, so I shrug and say, “Yeah, let’s go.”

We begin the usual departure proceedings—saying goodbye to the girls who are planning to stay, getting bitched at for never helping with the cleanup, making plans for who’s going to come by for the kegs and taps in the morning. Declan takes his time saying goodbye to people, and the rest of us get kind of bored of waiting for him, so we head out front to where Declan’s truck and Taylor’s car are parked.

I’m leaning against the side of the truck, having a smoke, when the yelling starts.

I turn. Declan has finally come out of the house, but he hasn’t made it much farther than the front porch, because some gorilla-lookin’ motherfucker has cornered him and is screaming in his face. Declan looks thoroughly unimpressed, but still unsteady with drunkenness.

“Called it,” Steven says triumphantly. “What did I say, guys? I said Dec was going to get his ass kicked for fucking around with Tamara. Everybody knows she’s always bringing that public school boyfriend of hers around to parties.”

“He’s not getting his—” Charlie starts to say, but he pauses when the guy on the porch hauls off and punches Declan in the mouth. “Alright, now he’s getting his ass kicked.” I’m the only one who takes a step towards the house. Charlie reaches out and snags the back of my coat. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine.”

“What, you want me to just stand here and let him get hit?” I protest.

“Kind of, yeah,” Sam says, at the same time that Steven admits, “It’s less effort than helping.”

I stare at them.

Javi shrugs. “We like to let him get stomped into the ground once or twice a semester when he’s too drunk to defend himself. Most of the time, people are smart enough to avoid messing with him, but sometimes, he’ll get so trashed that he can’t fight back, and that’s usually when people try to get in and fuck him up. Keeps him humble—he stops banging other guys’ girlfriends for at least two weeks.”

“That’s not ‘cause he’s humble,” Steven argues. “He’s just waiting for the bruises to fade.”

I look back across the lawn. Every punch is accompanied by this wet, slapping sound; it takes me a few seconds to realize the wetness is Declan’s blood, tracking out of a split lip and smearing all over his jaw. He’s too dazed to move his own fists, to protest, to do anything other than slump back against the porch railing and let himself get wailed on. It feels wrong to see someone like Declan getting hit and not fighting back.

I wonder if this is how I looked when Dave hit me.

It’s not the same—I know it’s not the same, I know Declan isn’t getting abused by this asshole like I was getting abused by Dave. But in this moment, I look at Declan, more than six feet tall and nearly two hundred pounds, and all I can think is, why aren’t you fighting back, you little bitch? I can’t imagine anyone seeing someone built like Declan—or me—and believing that he’s incapable of taking care of himself.

Or someone else.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I open the driver’s side door and crawl halfway across Charlie’s lap—he makes a noise of protest and tries to shove me off—to get to the glovebox. The 5906 is still there, tucked under the driver’s manual. I pull it out and eject the magazine, check to make sure there isn’t a clip inside, then rack the slide halfway back to be sure there isn’t a bullet in the chamber. I can’t cock it while it’s empty, otherwise the slide will lock back, so I guess I’ve just got to pray that the asshole who’s beating Declan up won’t know enough about guns to realize I’m holding an uncocked weapon.

“Garen, what the fuck are you doing?” Charlie asks sharply, as I tumble back out of the cab and he realizes what I’ve got in my hand.

I have no fucking clue, I think, but I say, “Helping him, since you’re apparently too much of a pussy to do it yourself.”

I’m not fully aware of walking across the yard—only stepping away from the truck, then standing next to the guy and pressing the muzzle of the pistol to his temple. He goes completely still. It’s unlikely he can see even part of the gun from this angle, but he must know what it is. Not many things feel as cold as a gun to the head. The people around us have fallen into something louder than silence, but quieter than screaming. It’s mostly just noise. Everyone is staring at me—I’m staring at the guy—I want to be staring at Declan. At least, I want to see if I’ve earned myself a steely glare or a wide, thrilled smile. I don’t let myself blink.

“Declan,” I say, as calmly as I can, given the circumstances. “Are you okay?”

“Fucking perfect,” he murmurs, but it sounds like he’s answering a different question than the one I asked.

“Awesome. Are you good to walk on your own?” I ask. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “Then I need you to go get in the truck now.”

There’s a beat as Declan mulls this over before deciding, “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” I snap.

“I mean no, I’m not going to get in the fucking truck. It’s my gun. If you’re going to shoot someone with it, I should be allowed to watch,” he says.

Unable to stop myself, I toss him an exasperated look. He knows the gun is unloaded and uncocked, and the longer I stand here, the higher the odds of someone realizing that and pointing it out to the guy I’m threatening. But Declan is grinning at me with a bloody mouth, and something about that face… makes me want to play. Slowly, I turn my eyes back to the guy. “I’m only going to shoot him if he refuses to apologize.”

“Please,” the guy says.

“I appreciate the manners, dude, but that’s not a fucking apology,” I say. “So, tell him you’re sorry, or I’m going to have to pistol-whip you. I don’t want to—”

“I want you to,” Declan pipes up.

I silence him with a look, but oh god, I’m totally going to pistol-whip this guy. I really don’t want to do it, but my muscles feel tight from all this adrenaline, and I’m pretty sure I left my impulse control back in the glovebox, where I should have left this gun. It feels like the decision about whether or not to hurt this guy is out of my hands now. I grit my teeth and shift my hand further down the grip of the gun so that the side of my palm is hanging slightly over the edge. If I hit him like this, I won’t really be catching him with the gun—it’ll just look like I am, maybe, and that’s the point, isn’t it? Making everyone around me fear what might happen to them if they ignore the things I tell them to do?

Right now, what I’m doing—it’s not about pain. It’s about power. It’s about respect.

“Tell him you’re sorry,” I say again.

The guy turns his head ever so slightly towards me, just enough that his pleading eyes can lock onto mine. He says, “I’m sorry.”

I strike the side of my palm hard against his forehead, and someone shrieks. He staggers backward a little, dazed; it might not have been a real pistol whip, but it was still a hit to the head with more force than I should’ve used. My heart skips a beat, but I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I jab the muzzle of the gun against his temple again and say, “I said to tell him you’re sorry, not me. I’m not the one you hit. Now fucking do it, before I—”

“Sorry, Campbell,” the guy says. “S-Sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you. That was wrong, it was fucked up, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, I probably shouldn’t have asked your girlfriend if she likes anal,” Declan laughs. “She does, by the way. Or at least, she did tonight.”

The guy flushes and lets out a tiny snarl. I press the gun harder to his head as a warning, then fling a hand out to catch Declan by the collar of his jacket. I haul him away from the porch railing and shove him in the general direction of our friends. He almost trips, but I steady him as I say, “Declan, for fuck’s sake, shut up and go get in the truck, or I’m going to shoot you instead of this dude.”

Declan scoffs and sways closer to me. “Bullshit,” he says. “You’d never shoot me, you like me too much.” And then his ‘swaying closer’ mostly becomes ‘falling against me,’ as he crowds in close and smacks a loud, quick kiss to my cheek. “Thanks, Anderson. You’re a real knight in shining armor.”

It takes all of my self control not to watch him as he saunters away.

The guy sneaks another look at me, and without thinking, I give him a light smack with the barrel of the gun. Or, at least, as light as any smack with a thirty-eight ounce, stainless steel gun can be. He lets out a little huff of pain, and I have to bite down on my tongue to stop myself from sucking in a nervous breath. I can’t really hurt him. I don’t know that I would want to, even if I could get away with it. But if I hit him hard enough to do any serious damage, or hard enough to get his blood on Declan’s gun, I’m completely fucked.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “I’m going to walk away. If you try to follow me or my friends, or try to attack me when my back is turned, or try to come back to Patton and fuck Dec up when I’m not looking, I will kill you.”

I can’t remember the last time I made a threat like that. I’m not sure I ever have.

It feels good, though. I keep going.

“And that’s not fucking hyperbole, you understand? I will kill you. If you come at me, I will empty this clip into your body. This gun has a ten round magazine; that’s two bullets in each of your limbs and two in your stomach so that you’re still technically alive when I break your skull open with the empty pistol.” Jesus Christ, who says things like this? I can’t even believe the words that are coming out of my mouth. The guy on the other end of the gun looks like he can’t, either. I take a step back and add, mostly for the sake of one last attempt at politeness, “Any questions?”

“N-No,” the guy says, shaking his head.

“Awesome,” I say. What is wrong with me? I take a step back, then another, then another. When the guy still doesn’t move, I turn and stride towards the truck as quickly as I can without breaking into an actual run.

When I get to the truck, only Charlie is actually ready to go. Declan is leaning against the side of the truck, grinning at me. “Well, that was—”

“Get in the truck,” I interrupt, trying to nudge him in the direction of the cab. He doesn’t react at all.

“Anderson gets to drive the truck, because he’s my new favorite,” he declares. “He’s the only one of you fuckin’ cunts who’s ever helped me out when I’m getting pounded on.”

“That’s just because Garen’s hoping to get a chance to pound you himself,” Taylor says. I give him the finger, and he returns the gesture. “And, of course, because he wanted an excuse to point a gun at a total stranger.”

“Yeah, which is probably why we should go. I don’t want to still be here if the cops show up, and they tend to get called once weapons come out,” I say. The other must agree, because they start piling into Taylor’s car, but Declan hasn’t moved. “Dec, get in the truck, we’re leaving.”

He glowers through the window at Charlie and repeats, “Anderson gets to drive the truck. He’s my—”

“—favorite, yeah, we all heard you,” I snap. “But in case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one holding an unregistered firearm in the middle of a high school party full of drunk kids, which means I’m the one who’s going to get arrested if we don’t get out of here.”

Declan seems unmoved by my words, but Charlie rolls his eyes and shuffles sideways across the bench into the passenger seat. I shove the gun at him, and he tucks it back into the glove compartment. When I lean back out of the truck to look at Declan, I find him tipping dangerously far to one side, a single gust of wind away from falling over. I grab him by the collar of his jacket and drag him upright, stuffing him into the truck cab and climbing in after him. “Put your seatbelts on,” I order.

Charlie obeys, but he’s staring at me. “Christ, did you get hit, too?”

“What? No, I—” I glance in the rearview mirror and see that there’s a smear of red across my cheekbone. I squint and lean closer, and then I realize that it’s a bloody kiss print. My eyes drift to the side, meeting Declan’s in the mirror. He grins, and there’s blood between his teeth. I huff and direct my attention back out the windshield. “You suck.”

“You wish I would,” he retorts. Charlie chuckles, but Declan’s hand drops to my thigh and gives it a tight squeeze. His fingers trace my inseam for the rest of the drive back to school, and every time I glance in the rearview mirror, he’s staring back at me, gaze rapt and hungry.

Once I’ve pulled into the Patton parking lot and cut the engine, Declan’s hand moves from my leg to the flask from the inner pocket of his jacket. He takes a long pull from it, even though the sting of the liquor against the cut on his lip makes him wince. Charlie gets out of the truck, but when I try to do the same, Declan catches my sleeve and mutters, “Hang back a bit.”

“Yo, Dec. You coming, or what?” Steven calls from halfway up the path to the dorms.

“Give me a few minutes,” Declan says. He shifts up onto his knees on the seat and leans halfway out the passenger window. “The dorm advisers always give us shit when we show up in a big group, and I’m too drunk to deal with that. I’ll hang here for a while and go up solo. Garen can make sure I don’t end up dead in the woods or something.” He twists to look over his shoulder at me. “You can do that, right?”

I can’t do a damn thing other than stare at his ass, which is pretty much at eye level, given the way he’s kneeling on the bench. It might take me a minute, but eventually, I realize I should probably look him in the eyes. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “I can do that.”

He grins at me and flicks his eyes to the side, just so I’m clear on the fact that he knows exactly what I’ve been staring at. He turns back around and waves the guys on, but he stays in that same pose for a while, watching them retreat to the dorm. The moment the door to Whitman Hall closes behind Sam, Dec scrambles backward and lands on my lap.

“You’ve officially won the argument about whether or not you look hot with a gun,” he says, hauling me closer by the collar of my jacket. “You do. You really, really fucking do.”

“Knew you’d come around eventually,” I say, grinning. He kisses me—it’s a clumsy, off-center kiss, but he cups my jaw in his hands and steers me until our mouths properly align. A moment later, when he draws back to speak, I duck my head to catch two of his fingers between my lips. His eyes, already glassy, go even more unfocused as he watches me suck.

“You can do it, if you want to. I know you want to,” he says. I’d have to stop sucking on his fingers in order to answer properly, so I end up making a distracted, questioning hum around the digits instead of pulling off to form coherent words. He answers, “You can fuck me. C’mon, you want to put it in my ass? Do it, I’ll let you, I want you to—”

“Since when?” I ask when he pulls his fingers from my mouth in order to reach for his belt. I grab his wrist to stop him. “You said no before.”

“I said no to everything before, and then you stole a police cruiser for me. I said no to getting fucked, and you pulled a gun on someone for me. I keep drawing the same lines I’d draw with anyone else, but—you’re not. You’re not like everyone else, you do these things, you go and do these things that are completely fucking crazy—”

“Be nice,” I warn.

Asking Declan to be nice is like asking a wolf to put its fangs away. He gives me a quick, feral smile and presses me harder into the seat. He slips a hand up my shirt and repeats, “You do crazy things for me. Things nobody else has ever thought of doing. Makes me wanna do the same for you, let you do things nobody else has done.” He ducks to get his mouth on my neck, traces the length of my jugular with his tongue, then comes in tight to say in my ear, “You want me? You want to be in me?”

His breath feels white-hot against my skin. Dazed, I nod. My hands are clutching at his hips and trying to anchor him in place so I have something to grind against, and my pulse is rabbit-quick. I don’t know how much of this is adrenaline, and how much of it is just because of how much I want him. But his hands are clumsy when he reaches for my belt, and when he kisses me, he tastes like whiskey.

I plant my hands on his chest and push him away so suddenly, his back hits the steering wheel, and the truck horn blares. “Wait. Stop.” He’s still writhing on my lap. I grab his hips again, this time to keep him still. “Declan, stop. You’re drunk.”

“Are you only just now noticing this?” he asks, laughing.

“No, that’s not—I mean, you’re too drunk. Drunk enough that I’m not interested in doing this with you right now,” I say. He blinks. I add, “Get off.”

He blinks again.

And this--this is what I was afraid of. Saying no, and having his weight on top of me, and knowing that I might not be able to fight him off if he keeps pushing. But he doesn’t. He slips sideways off my lap and sprawls over the other side of the seat, banging his head against the passenger door in the process.

“Fuck, Anderson,” he groans, but he sounds like he wants to laugh anyway. “First, I was too young. Now, I’m too drunk. I hope you realize that it’s really strange, the way you keep accidentally convincing yourself you’re raping someone, even after the person has made it clear that he’s into it.”

“Better than the alternative,” I say tightly. I take him by the elbow and shift him upright. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

“You won’t,” he says, pawing at my hand until I release him, “because the fact that you don’t wanna fuck doesn’t mean I don’t still want to get off.”

I take about four seconds to be privately amused over the image of how annoyed Ben would be if he heard someone use a triple negative like that, but then I’m completely distracted from that line of thinking as Declan wriggles his way out of his jacket and t-shirt and goes for the buckle of his belt again.

“Not fucking you,” I say.

“Not asking you to,” he says. He shoves his jeans and boxers down just enough to get his dick out, sighs in relief at the first skin-on-skin contact. The streetlight glow slices through the windshield, falling across his face; his eyes are closed, lids twitching like he thinks he should open them but can’t bring himself to actually do it. The hand he’s got on himself is the same tight, slow grip he has used on me twice now. I’d assumed he was just trying to tease me, but it seems he just tries to do me like he does himself. Somehow, that makes it too much to resist.

I dig through my jacket pockets until I find an individual packet of lubricant, along with a couple of condoms; I toss the condoms aside and use my teeth to tear open the corner of the lube packet. Some of the lube drips onto my lip, but the rest gets smeared all over my palm. I pull my knees up under me and crawl across the bench seat towards Declan. When I get my slick, warm hand on him, he lets out a gravelly moan and presses up into my touch. I wedge my torso between his raised, bent knees so that I can crowd down into his space and get my mouth on his. It’s taking a hell of a lot of concentration to keep my balance, because my free hand is clawing at my belt, yanking my jeans open, pushing them far down enough that I can spread myself out on top of Dec and set my erection right against his.

He pushes my shirt up under my arms so that we can grind our bodies together with nothing but a thin sheen of lube between us. Between my weight on top of him and the awkward angle he’s contorted in to fit two grown men on a single bench seat, Declan can barely move. He can, however, sink his teeth into my lower lip and grab onto my ass with both hands to yank me harder down against him.

The whole goddamn truck is rocking on its wheels from the force of my thrusts, but I still draw back from the kiss—the bite, whatever—to say, “This is cool with you, right? I’ll stop, if you want me to stop. I can—”

“I want you to stop worrying, Christ,” he groans. “And I want—everyone’s clearing out of the dorms tomorrow afternoon for spring break, I want you to come by after. Tomorrow night? Sunday? I don’t care when, just come over, I’ll be sober, I’ve got so many things I want you to do to me.”

“I’ll do them all,” I promise, burying my face against the curve of his neck.

When I get home forty-five minutes later, I'm still sticky from the sweat, lube, and spunk I couldn't wipe off in the truck. I expect Omelette to come barreling down the stairs from Travis' room, waking half the neighborhood in the process, but he comes tearing out of the kitchen instead. I greet him--and shove his face away when he starts sniffing at the mess gluing my shirt to my skin, because letting my dog investigate some guy's jizz is a level of gross I don't even want to contemplate. I poke my head into the kitchen and blink.

Travis is sitting at the table, papers spread all around him, bloodshot eyes staring blankly at the screen of his laptop. I check the time on my phone; it's almost three. "Hey. I'm surprised you're still awake. Don't you have work in the morning?" I say. I head to the sink and start scrubbing my hands clean. When Travis doesn't respond, I shut the water off, dry my hands on the legs of my jeans, and take a seat at the table. "Trav. Do you even know what time it is?"

He finally looks up from the computer screen. "Yeah. It's late, I know. I just needed to finish a few things. Pay some bills, figure out some stuff for school. I'll probably head upstairs soon." He closes his eyes and arches his back until it cracks. "How was the party?"

"It was good. Parts of it, anyway," I say.

Omelette rears up to put his front paws on my knees, and I scratch behind his ears. Travis reaches out and slowly smooths the fur on the top of the dog's head. "Hooked up with him again, huh?"

This is the last conversation I ever want to have with Travis. Instead, I nod towards the dog. "Who, Omelette? Of course not, that's disgusting. I'm into some pretty questionable things, but bestiality is fucked up even by my standards."

"Sometimes, I wonder exactly how many brain cells you lost to drug use," Travis sighs. "You know who I'm talking about. Your friend, Declan. You said it was his birthday party, so... you hooked up with him again, didn't you?"

I don't know how he could've guessed that. Am I that obvious? Can he smell it? I push the dog down and draw my legs up to my chest, like that'll do anything to make me less of a gross mess. I clear my throat. "I guess. We didn't fuck." Travis' head bobs in slow acknowledgment, but he doesn't say anything. It's just like it was the first time I told him about me and Dec, or the time he walked in on us; he seems a tiny bit surprised, but mostly like he doesn't give a fuck. I grit my teeth and look down at my hands. "We probably will, though. He said he's down, and we're on break all week. I think I'll maybe head over to campus on Sunday and make use of his empty dorm room." Travis still doesn't say anything, and my stomach starts to turn. I keep going. "He's never gotten fucked before, but virgins are pretty much my specialty at this point. I'll make it good for him."

I look up; Travis' head is still rolling in that same, slow nod. I let my legs fall back to the floor so that I can kick him under the table, and he jolts, stops nodding. "What the hell was that for?" he demands.

"For ignoring me," I snap. He opens his mouth to argue, but before he can, I burst out, "I just told you I'm going to spend the next week fucking some other guy in the ass, and all you’re doing is nodding. Don’t you care? Aren’t you, like…” Christ, I wish I hadn’t said any of this. But it’s not like I can shut up now. I duck my head and mutter, “Aren’t you jealous?”

The question hangs heavy and unwelcome between the two of us. Travis’ spine snaps straight, like sitting up properly is the furthest away from me he can get without pushing his chair back from the table. “Is that the reason you’re hooking up with him, then? So that you can make me jealous?”

“No, that’s not—” the entire reason. I sit back in my own chair and rub one distracted hand over my scalp. “Declan’s sexy, and he’s a cool guy to hang out with. He’s got a good body. He’s fun to fuck around with. I like him—that’s why I’m hooking up with him, alright? But you know how crazy I got when you were dating Ben last year, or when started hooking up with Joss in the fall.”

“You mean, I know how much of a douchebag you can be at times? Yeah, G, I’m well aware,” he snaps.

“I’m not being a—Travis, I want you more than anything. When I have to see you with other people, it hurts. It makes me miss you even more than I already do, and it makes me fucking hate whoever you’re with. But you never act like that with me, and I don’t understand why.”

Travis leans his elbows on the table and puts his face in his hands. “I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s a bad thing to me, because no matter who I’m with, or what I’m doing, you never seem to care. Do you even realize how many people I’ve hooked up with since we met? Eleven, counting you. And you’ve got, what—me, Ben, Al, Joss… that’s it. Three people besides me, and hearing about every single one of those people broke my fucking heart. But you… I kiss Jamie at midnight on New Year’s, and you laugh about it. Ben sucks me off in his car, and you just watch from across the parking lot. I tell you I’m going to fuck Declan, and you nod along. I get back together with Dave, and—”

“Don’t,” Travis interrupts, leaning suddenly towards me. “Don’t ever think for one second that I wasn’t completely devastated by what Dave did to you. My heart still stops whenever I think about any of it—hearing you tell me about it for the first time on Christmas, finding out you’d gotten back together with him after our parents’ honeymoon, seeing the split lips and black eyes, finding you—fuck, finding your body after prom and waiting an entire day to see if you’d even survive.”

It takes all my concentration to remember how to unclench my jaw enough to say, “That’s not the kind of ‘caring’ I meant.”

“It’s the kind that matters, though,” he says. “Do you honestly think I get jealous when you start going after someone new? Because I don’t, Garen. I get fucking scared. That night we went to laser tag was the only time I ever spent more than a minute in Declan’s presence, and he seemed like this macho, oversexed asshole. That worries me, okay? I just…” He takes a deep breath. “If you’re going to keep hooking up with him, I need to know how much he knows. About what you’ve been through, and how to handle it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand.

“I’ve seen you have some sort of PTSD flashback because I touched your hip, and I’ve felt the way you still sometimes flinch if I touch you when you’re not expecting it. And then there were…” His hand twitches across the table like he’s going to take mine, but after a pause, he swallows and withdraws. A minute passes. He nuts up enough to take my hand for real. “There were those, um… rumors, I guess, the ones Ms. Markland brought up in the guidance office right before the school play. The ones about Dave, about how he didn’t just beat you up.”

My whole body feels so cold that I actually shudder. I try to pull my hand away, but Travis’ fingers tighten, and I can’t. I can’t pull away, and I can’t stay here, and I can’t think of a single thing to say right now, except, “Fuck you.”

“Joss said they weren’t true, but I think she was lying for you,” Travis continues, as if I haven’t said a word. His voice is determined now, but his hand feels like it might be shaking a little bit on mine. “Sometimes, Ben gives you these looks, like… I don’t know. Or I’ll say something about you or something you’ve done, and James will get this kind of… this tightness around his mouth? Like he’s trying to stop himself from saying something? And I think they know. I think you must have talked about it with them, I think maybe you’ve talked about it with everyone but me, and that’s—”

“Fuck you,” I say again, and my voice cracks. I yank my hand out from under his and shove myself back from the table. The legs of my chair screech against the linoleum floor, and Omelette barks. “You are not asking me about this, okay? We are not having this stupid fucking conversation, because nothing—”

“All I want is an answer, G. Have you told Declan the truth about what happened between you and Dave?”

I haven’t told anyone the truth about what happened between me and Dave. In moments of weakness, I’ve blurted out half-confessions to Jamie and Ben, let them work out the rest in their heads. I’ve hedged my way through sessions with Doctor Howard and gritted my teeth every time she says that word. But I haven’t really said it before, and I don’t think I can start tonight.

“Declan knows what he needs to know, and so do you. Everything else is my fucking business.” I stand up and tuck my empty chair back into place at the table. “It’s late. You have work in the morning, and I have to drive to Lakewood for therapy. We should both go to sleep.”

When I get upstairs, I go straight to the bathroom to take a long, achingly hot shower. Even after I get out, Travis’ bedroom door is still open down the hall, light off, bed empty. A quick glance down the stairs tells me that the kitchen light is still on. I want to go apologize to him. I want to go tell him everything that Dave did to me. Instead, I go to my room and close the door behind me.

214 days sober

I plan to write a note. An apology, I guess--sorry for trying to make you jealous, sorry for saying you don’t care about me, sorry for blowing up at you about the Dave thing even though it’s none of your fucking business. Something to that effect, anyway. I plan to write a note and slip it under Travis’ door so that he’s sure to see it when he wakes up soon for his Saturday shift. That way, he can read it while I’m safely tucked away in Doctor Howard’s office at the LRC, sobbing about my feelings, and when I get back to New York this afternoon, he and I can hug it out and settle our conflict so that I don’t feel like an asshole tomorrow when I meet up with Declan at his dorm.

I get as far as hauling myself downstairs to find a pen and some paper before my plan falls apart.

Travis isn’t in his room; he’s in the kitchen still, and from the looks of it, he never left. He’s slumped over in his seat, head pillowed on the table, shoulders rising and falling with every slow, even breath. One of his arms is dangling at his side, hovering over Omelette’s sleeping form, like he’d been petting the dog before they both dropped off. I frown. This is insane dedication to schoolwork, even for Travis. I creep up next to him and touch his shoulder.

“Travis?” I say quietly. “Can you wake up for me?”

His eyes snap open, and he jerks upright. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh…” He frowns, digs the heels of his hands into his eyelids, then blinks heavily at me. “What were we talking about?”

“We weren’t talking about anything,” I say slowly, “because it’s almost nine in the morning, and I went to bed like, seven hours ago. Why the hell are you still down here? Did you ever go to sleep?”

Travis snorts and gestures to the table. “Clearly.”

“I meant in your bed, dumbass,” I say, reaching for the nearest of his papers. “You have all weekend to do your home—”

“Don’t,” he says sharply, lunging for the papers.

Maybe I do it because I’m an asshole, maybe I do it because the panicked look in his eyes is weirding me out—either way, I jerk the papers out of reach and peer down at them. “Why, what’s so important? Is this—”

But I trail off almost immediately, because the papers aren’t homework, like I’d thought. The top page is mostly math—one large number getting smaller and smaller with each line, sometimes jumping back up a few hundred, only to deplete again a few lines later. It isn’t until I see that there are several lines of the same amount labeled with the letter R that I realize I’m looking at his finances. I stare at the tiny number at the bottom, then at Travis’ flushed face.

“What’s this?” I ask.

He snatches the papers back and snaps, “It’s my trainwreck of a life, okay? It’s the fucking hole I dug myself into. I thought I could handle all this—moving to New York, living here with you, going to Columbia, working full-time. But it’s all too much. I’m trying so hard, and I’m still fucking it up.”

“I mean, do the math, Garen. I have to shell out almost four grand on the first of every month to keep up with my tuition payment plan. And then it’s two grand for rent, a hundred bucks for bills, a hundred and twenty a week just to keep gas in my car and food in my mouth. I’ve got like, six thousand and one-hundred-something dollars going out on the first day of every single month, but not even close to that much coming in.” He drops the stack of papers on the table and runs both hands through his hair, staring down at the table in something wild-eyed enough that it might be terror. “I work as many hours as they’ll give me, as many hours as I can around school, but I’m still only making minimum wage. I bring home less than three hundred dollars a week, after taxes. I’m completely fucked.”

I reach for his shoulder, but he doesn’t react at all. It’s like he hasn’t even felt the touch. I let my hand fall again. “But what about—” I wrack my brain, trying to remember any of the bullshit hoops Ben is always telling me he has to jump through in order to fund his tuition. “What about FAFSA? O-Or scholarships, financial aid. You’re eighteen years old and paying for school all by yourself. You have to be eligible for something with that.”

“Yeah, maybe I would’ve been, if I’d finished school on-time instead of a semester early,” he says. “I only decided I was going to college at the end of November. It was too late for me to get cleared for any of the financial assistance I would’ve been good for. Besides, I’m not sure how much I can even get anyway—both my parents make too much money for me to get much in the way of need-based financial aid. I mean, they’re really only looking at my mom, but still. She’s definitely more than comfortably middle-class.”

Those words hit me like a punch to the face. I actually have to brace my hands against the tabletop to stop myself from stumbling. I swallow hard before I say, voice almost vibrating, “What the fuck does that bitch have to do with your college tuition?”

Travis shoots me a warning look, but I don’t move. He’s fucking delusional, if he thinks I’m going to take back a single bad word I’ve ever spoken about his mom, especially when she’s somehow fucking up his life even though she hasn’t spoken to him in almost four and a half months. Reluctantly, he admits, “If she claims me as her dependent on her taxes—which she can, considering she did technically support me all last year—Columbia probably won’t give me much financial aid. Most colleges operate under the assumption that students get at least some tuition money from their parents.”

“Can’t you just fight it out with the school board?” I ask.

He lets his head roll back so that his face is tipped towards the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. That would only cover me for next semester, and I’m not… I don’t think I can—” He close his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m dropping out of Columbia after the spring semester ends. I can’t do it anymore, Garen.”

A year ago, if anyone had tried to suggest that Travis McCall might drop out of school, I would’ve laughed in that person’s face. This is ridiculous, and this sure as hell isn’t Travis. I reach for his arm, and this time, he leans into my hand. “That’s not true. I know you can do it. Look, I understand what—”

“No, you don’t,” he says, voice crackling under the strain of forcing the interruption out. “I’m sorry, G, I’m trying not to point this out, but you don’t understand what it’s like to be so fucking broke that you have to make choices like this.” He gestures to his computer screen. “As of this very second, I have five thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight dollars, and fifty-seven cents in my account. That’s it, that’s everything I have. At the start of May, it’ll be up by a couple hundred, but I’ve got my tuition payment and my half of the rent due that same day. And I can’t afford both.”

“That’s fine,” I say immediately. “Don’t worry about the rent, dude, I can cover us both this month. I’ve got more than enough to do it—besides, I’ve got my club audition on Friday, and if I get the job, I’ll have more cash coming in. I can help you, I want to help you. You just worry about the tuition, and we’ll figure out the rent after you’ve made all your payments. You’ve got, what—two more? The one on May first, and the one on June first? That’s not so bad.”

I cringe. It sounds like he does, but I’m pretty sure I can’t say that to him without getting the silent treatment for a week. Instead, I say, “I know, I know. I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need you to help me,” he says. “I just need you to—fuck. It doesn’t matter, okay? I’ve got everything figured out. I talked to a guy at a dealership in town, and he says I can get around thirteen thousand for my car. That’s—good. That’s good money, that’s enough to cover my rent and tuition for the next two months. And once I’m out of school, I can get another job, work more hours. But I should tell you… the lease we have on this place?”

“Travis, no,” I say, but he keeps talking over me.

“It expires at the end of June, and we’ve been talking about renewing it, but I don’t… I think you need to find another roommate. Or we could just give up the house entirely. You could move to the city to live with James, I could move back to Connecticut. Minimum wage there is more than it is in New York, and Jerry would probably pay me a little over that if I asked for my job at the Daily Grind again. I could find some shitty little studio apartment to live in, or I could see if the right amount of groveling and pretending I’m straight might get my mom to let me move back to her house.” He looks down at his hands and adds softly, “You can have the dog.”

“I don’t want the dog,” I snap. “I want us to have the dog, it’s our fucking dog, Travis, not just mine. And this whole idea is--no. You’re not leaving New York. You’re not leaving me.”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? Besides, the whole point of me moving here was so that you had a roommate while you were at Patton. You’re graduating in a month, so you don’t need that anymore. You don’t need me.”

And that’s the moment when I see—really see—what he’s actually saying to me. I see the wide-eyed but blank expression on his face. I see the slant of his shoulders; not taught and hunched up close to his ears, like they usually are when he gets stressed, but slumped down so far that it looks like his clavicle has disappeared completely. I see the shadows under his eyes, and the paleness of his skin under his freckles. I see the boy whose suicide note drafts I found in January.

My legs are barely capable of supporting me anymore, so I sink into the same chair I sat in last night, then drag his chair closer to mine. Our knees knock together, and he shifts as if to make room, but I curl one hand into his t-shirt and the other into his hair, pulling at him until he’s practically in my lap. “I need you,” I say hoarsely. “You know I need you more than anything. From the first day I met you until the day I die, I’m always going to need you. Travis, you can’t.”

He tries to pry my hands off him, but he doesn’t try hard enough to make it happen. “You’re overreacting. We’ll only be two hours apart. It’s just a move.”

“It’s not, and we both know it,” I argue, and he goes still. I swallow. “That’s not what you’re planning. I know you, Trav. You’d rather die than go crawling back to Lakewood alone, and that’s not—you can’t. I won’t let you leave me like that.”

He tries to wriggle free again, and this time, he manages it. He practically tumbles out of his seat in his haste to get out of the room and up the stairs. “I have to get ready for work,” he calls down to me, “and you’re going to be late for your session. You should go.”

I don’t. I wait for him, because I can’t stand the thought of leaving him alone. And I definitely can’t stand the thought of letting him drive himself anywhere in this condition, not when he casually admitted to me a month ago that, if he’d gone through with his suicide, he probably would have driven himself into a tree or off a bridge or something so that he wouldn’t have to worry about me finding his body. I sit on the floor at the bottom of the stairs and pet Omelette in solemn silence until Travis returns fifteen minutes later, dressed in his Starbucks uniform and blinking down at me in surprise. I shrug. “I have to stop by Jamie’s place before I head to Lakewood,” I lie. “I left something there the last time he and I hung out, and I wanna pick it up. Since I’m headed to Manhattan anyway, I might as well drive you.”

“My shift ends at two. You won’t be back in time to pick me up,” he says. He steps over me and the dog and goes to retrieve his car keys from the kitchen. I scramble after him, take the keys out of his hand, and pitch them across the room. He gives me an exasperated look and picks them up. I grab them again and put them in the refrigerator. He goes for the fridge door, and I wedge myself between him and it, blocking it with all hundred and eighty-five pounds of my body. “Garen, stop. I’m not going to be late for work just because you want to have a temper tantrum.”

“I’m not going to stop having a temper tantrum until you agree to let me drive you to work,” I shoot back. “I’ll be back in time to pick you up, I promise. Please.”

“I thought you were going to go hook up with Declan tonight,” he says, crossing his arms.

I shake my head. “No, I’m—tomorrow. That’s when I was going to see him. But I’ll cancel that, too, if you want me to. I just want to spend some time with you, please.”

Reluctantly, he agrees, but the half-hour drive to the city is almost completely silent, which doesn’t exactly spell ‘quality time.’ I don’t even bother to turn on the radio, though Travis does, after maybe twenty minutes. When I reach for his hand, he lets me take it, but doesn’t curl his fingers around mine in return. He just keeps staring ahead through the windshield. When I pull into the garage under Jamie’s building, Travis gets out and walks away without saying a single word.

I loiter near the door for a few minutes, watching him retreat to the sidewalk. Only once he’s out of sight do I go for the intercom and press the button for Jamie’s apartment. Nearly two minutes pass before there’s a beep, followed by his curious greeting, “Yes?”

“Of course,” he says, and he buzzes me in. I slip through the unlatched door and through the lobby, offering a stilted wave to the doorman. I’m practically bouncing in place the whole elevator ride up to his apartment. The door is unlocked for me, and Jamie is in the kitchen, pouring boiling water into a pair of white teacups. He glances up as the door closes behind me and says, “Morning. Tea?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

He picks up the second cup anyway and tips his head towards the other side of the apartment. I follow him down the hallway to the bedroom. There is a large lump under the blankets in the center of the bed. Jamie sets the second teacup on the nightstand and stoops to dig through a black backpack that is much more battered than that gay-looking, brown leather satchel he usually carries his books in. He eventually surfaces with a box of what appears to be medication. He pops a little white pill out of the plastic and foil, sets it down on the nightstand next to the teacup, and shoves the lump of blankets.

“Wake up, you twat,” he says. “Garen’s here, and he’s got his ‘serious face’ on. I brought you tea and your pill. Take it now, or you’ll start bitching in ten minutes, and I don’t want to hear that.”

The lump wriggles and utters something that sounds kind of like a threat. A skinny, scarred arm creeps out from under the corner of the blankets, takes the pill from the nightstand, and retreats. It creeps back out again a few seconds later and goes for the teacup, but Jamie intercepts it.

“No. You’ll spill it all over my bed, and then I will have to murder you. And if you think I’m joking for even a moment, then I dare you to try it,” he warns.

There’s a huff of annoyance, and finally, Ben unearths himself from the mountain of blankets and sits up so that he can sip at the tea and swallow the pill. He’s not wearing a shirt, and though the blankets pooled around his waist make it impossible for me to tell, I’m guessing he’s not wearing pants, either. He hitches his chin at me and says, “Could’ve warned me he’s a morning person. If I’d known he gets up at fucking eight on Saturdays, I would’ve told him to go fuck himself when he first asked me out.”

“Sorry. Guess I’m just used to it by now,” I say. I gesture to the pill. “Aspirin?”

“Antihistamines,” he corrects. “I’m allergic to cats, and—”

“—the fucking thing likes him,” Jamie grumbles, casting a baleful look at Zooey, who is just rising from her slumber. She stretches, then leaps from her miniature cat bed to Jamie’s California king.

Ben reaches out a hand towards her, and she proceeds to rub herself all over his fingers, peering up at Jamie through barely slitted eyes all the while. Jamie narrows his eyes right back at her, like her purring under the hands of another person is a deliberate insult to him. Judging by how bizarrely smug she looks, it might be. Ben glances at me and asks, “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“What are you doing here?” I shoot back, even though it’s kind of obvious that Jamie is what he’s doing here. Or, what he was doing.

Ben shrugs. “Lent ended last weekend, and I got tired of listening to this asshole whine about how I’m blue-balling him.”

Jamie’s narrowed eyes shift from Zooey’s face to Ben’s. “Excuse me, you fucking wart on the face of humanity. I have never in my life whined about being blue-balled, least of all by you. And you could stand to give me a bit more credit than that.” He turns to me and declares, as triumphantly as if he’s announcing that he’s found the cure for cancer, “I took him on a date. I showed him around the city, I bought him dinner in the West Village—”

“You did not, you lying sack of shit,” Ben interrupts. He has stopped petting Zooey, who shows her displeasure for this development by trying to climb up his bare chest. He scoops her up and starts absently scratching behind her ears; he remains entirely focused on glaring at Jamie, but saying to me, “He did not fucking buy me dinner. We split the tab—”

“I tried to buy you dinner. I offered to buy you dinner, but you told me that I was being a supercilious—Lord, what was the delightful word you chose to use? Was it goatfucker?”

“Yeah, it was, because that’s exactly what you were being—”

“You said it in front of the waiter--”

“This is New York. I highly doubt that was the worst thing he heard someone say that day. Besides, it was beyond patronizing for you to—”

“Wow, this is so adorable,” I say flatly. “Seriously, I cannot wait to hear all the details so that I can someday perform a dramatic rendition of this very story in my best man speech at your wedding, but can you both shut the fuck up, because I came here for help, not to moderate your foreplay.”

They both look around at me in surprise. I look back at Jamie—he has known me for three years longer than Ben has, he knows the nuances of my facial expressions better than anyone else does. Sure enough, whatever he sees there is enough to sober him. He steps closer, touches my elbow, and quietly asks, “Did something happen?”

I shake my head and force out, “No, not—I mean, not yet, anyway. Um…” I scrub my hands over my scalp and sigh. “I don’t know if you had plans today, you know—”

I gesture towards Ben, who shakes his head and says, “I have work at eleven o’clock. I was going to take the train back soon anyway.”

“I can give you a ride,” I say. To Jamie, I take a deep breath and say, “Travis is only working until two this afternoon, and I’m not positive I’ll be back from Lakewood by then. I need you to find some excuse to meet him at the end of his shift, and I need you to ask him to hang out with you tonight until I get back.”

“Is he alright?” Jamie asks, frowning. Slowly, I shake my head. Jamie’s eyebrows twitch upward. I gesture towards the bed, and he sits at the end of it, then scoots backward until he’s sitting up against the pillows like Ben.

“Nothing I say leaves this room, okay? You don’t talk to him or anyone else about what I’m about to say—either of you.” I wait until I have received two nods before continuing. “There are some things that happened last fall that Travis and I sort of kept from you two. Things he didn’t want you to know about, things it wasn’t my place to tell you.”

Ben’s brow creases. “Like what?”

“Like him getting his girlfriend pregnant,” I say. They stare at me in stunned disbelief, but I don’t really want to see their shocked expressions. I duck my head and add, “That’s why they stayed together as long as they did. He wanted her to keep it, and he was afraid that she’d get an abortion if he broke up with her. A valid concern, I guess, considering that’s exactly what ended up happening.”

I hear a muffled inhale from one of them, like a protest is being swallowed. I glance up to see that Ben’s lips are pressed together in an attempt to silence himself again. I raise my eyebrows so that he knows he can speak if he wants to, but he shakes his head. Privately, I’m kind of grateful—the last thing I need is a micro-sized Catholic women’s studies major getting all passionately conflicted about whether a woman’s right to choose trumps Jesus’s love for unborn babies, or what-the-fuck-ever he’s thinking about.

“When?” Jamie asks.

I shrug. “She found out she was pregnant right around the same time Ben and I started going out, so that was… I dunno, the start of October? And she got the abortion sometime after Travis turned eighteen, but before Thanksgiving.” I cross my arms. “She let him know by handing him a Planned Parenthood pamphlet, then told me that it was all my fault.”

“No, actually, I went to the liquor store and bought myself a bottle of Jack,” I say. Jamie’s face goes completely blank. Ben’s mouth is still tightened into a line. I shrug again. “Didn’t drink it, obviously, but, you know…. It was a hard semester for me. Worse for Travis, though. He, um.” I take a deep breath. “At the start of November, Travis told me that he’d been planning to kill himself. He was dealing with so much at once—his mom wasn’t talking to him, his preggo girlfriend was being a bitch, I was… relapsing and blaming it all on him. He couldn’t deal with it. The only thing that had been stopping him was the fact that he couldn’t get the wording of his suicide note right. I was so fucking scared of what he might do after Joss ditched the kid, but then he and I patched things up, and we were sort of together, and he seemed better, you know? And then his mom forced him to go back on his anti-depressants, and he started reacting… badly.”

“Badly?” Ben echoes.

I nod. “They were supposed to help his depression, but they only made it worse. He had all these side-effects, you know? Sleep irregularity, changes in appetite, sexual dysfunction. Suicidal thoughts. He seemed like he was okay some of the time, but—when we moved, there was this night when he asked me to get something out of his room, and I saw that he’d been practicing new drafts of a suicide note. Still trying to get the words right. It was just like we were stuck in October again, and he was fucked up in October. He was planning suicide, and he was so sad all the time, and he was cutting himself again.”

Ben huffs out a little breath, the way someone might after getting hit in the stomach. Jamie doesn’t look at him, but he does slip a hand onto his knee, even though Zooey swipes him for doing so.

“I confronted him about the note, and he told me he was having trouble adjusting to life in New York and college and stuff. I managed to—I don’t know. Talk him out of it, maybe? He met with my shrink, and she gave him a referral to a therapist in the area so he could find a way to wean himself off the meds that are fucking him up so badly. He’s… I thought he was okay. I thought he was better.”

“And I take it that you’re telling us all of this because he—” Jamie makes a half-aborted gesture with his free hand. “Isn’t?”

I shake my head. “He isn’t. Not at all. I guess he’s really fucked with school right now—not his classes, but like, the finances of it? And he just—he kept saying he was drowning. And he looked like it, too. It—he’s scaring me, guys. He needs help. Fuck, I need help. I need somebody to fucking babysit him when I’m not around, because I’m terrified that if I—”

My voice cracks, and I clamp my mouth shut. Jamie leans forward and catches my wrist, drags me closer until I’ve got no choice but to kneel in front of him on the bed. He keeps pulling and pulling, and eventually, I let myself be pulled right onto his lap. He releases his hold on Ben to wrap both arms around me, but I’ve only got half a second to feel guilty about that before Ben grabs my combat boots and tugs my legs onto his lap. I’m the biggest guy on the bed, but right now, I feel so small and childlike between them.

It takes so long, but finally, I admit, “I’m scared that, if he’s alone all day, I’ll be coming home tonight and finding his body.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Jamie says, nearly speaking over the end of my sentence. “You and this one over here are going to go to Connecticut, and you’re going to go on with your day. This afternoon, I’m going to march myself right on over to the shop where Travis works, I’m going to have him make me an unreasonably complicated drink that’s more syrup than actual coffee, and I’m going to kidnap him. Doesn’t even matter what I make him do, does it? We’ll go over our philosophy readings, grab a bite to eat, maybe see if there’s anything worth watching on the television. I won’t leave him alone long enough to take a piss, if that’s what you want me to do. He won’t do anything today. I won’t let him do that to himself or to you.”

A weight lifts from my shoulders, but it doesn’t go far.

Eventually, the two of them manage to coax me off the bed and out of the room. Ben takes a quick shower and collects his stuff, spends a long moment scratching under Zooey’s chin before she’s content to let him leave. For the first time, Ben is the one Jamie kisses goodbye, not me.

The drive to Lakewood is quiet and uneventful. I drop Ben off in front of the bookstore with ten minutes to spare before his shift and my therapy session. I’ll have to speed in order to make it to the LRC on time, and I’ve almost resigned myself to being late when I reach a too-familiar intersection.

The road to my right leads to the Lakewood Rehabilitation Center.

The road to my left leads to the old house, the one where everything came together and fell apart. The one where Evelyn still lives now, alone, without a single thought spared for the son she has all but abandoned.

I make the left turn before I can consider any of the hundred reasons why this is the worst idea I’ve had since—alright, if I’m being honest, since last night, when I pulled a gun on someone. But right now, when I think about how broken Travis looked this morning… tearing into his mom seems like it’s not a bad idea at all. Evelyn’s car is parked in the driveway; I park behind it, trudge up the walkway, and press one slightly shaking finger to the doorbell.

It’s less than a minute before the door swings inward. Evelyn stares at me; I stare back. There is total silence. The second she snaps out of it, she tries to close the door in my face. I shove my boot between the door and the frame. Evelyn tries once, twice, three times to slam it, but I’m wearing steel-toed combat boots, so I could stand here all afternoon, watching her fail.

“I’ll call the cops,” she threatens.

I snort. “And tell them what, exactly? That I’m trespassing in the house my father still owns? Right, that makes perfect sense.”

“This is harassment,” she snaps.

“This is a conversation. Or at least, it would be, if you could calm the fuck down,” I say. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you happy to see me, Mom?”

She makes a noise like she’s trying not to vomit. “I am not your mother.”

“Yeah, well, right now, you don’t seem to want to be anyone’s mom. Not even Travis’. You remember Travis, right? Your son? The one you haven’t spoken to in four months? Don’t you want to know how he is?”

Her attempts to slam the door cease so suddenly that I can almost hear the hinges rattling. She peers out at me through the opening created by my unmoving foot. Her face is completely soaked in suspicion, but I have no idea if it’s directed towards me or the circumstances. She asks, “Is he alright?”

“No,” I say simply. “Let me in.”

“No,” she echoes.

“I’m not having this fucking conversation through a half-closed door. Let me in the goddamn house, Ev.”

It takes a minute, but eventually, she steps back. I slip into the house before she has time to change her mind. Everything looks the same as it did months ago, the last time I was here. All of the furniture in the living room is the same, but neither of us makes a move to sit down on it. Evelyn crosses her arms. “Well?”

“Why are you dragging out the divorce?” I don’t realize that that’s the question I want to ask until it’s already out of my mouth. Her eyebrows flick upward, and I rush ahead before she can say a word. “You hate me; I know that. You think I ruined your life and your marriage, and hey, maybe I did. You think I should suffer for that. Maybe I should. But you shouldn’t take your frustration with me out on my family. My mom doesn’t deserve the way you’re trying to make her job impossible. My dad doesn’t deserve to be stuck in a marriage that won’t die, especially with a she-bitch like you. And Travis… Christ. Travis doesn’t deserve any of this.”

“Travis has made his choices,” Evelyn says coldly. “He’s the one who decided that moving to New York with you was more important than repairing our relationship. He’s the one that abandoned any attempt at reconciliation.”

I shove my hands into my jacket pockets. “He was stupid for following me to New York. I’m not worth it.”

“Clearly.”

I’ve never wanted to walk out on anyone more in my life. I find myself clenching my toes in my boots to keep my feet from moving towards the door. But I can’t leave just yet, not when she’s still so blind to all the pain she has caused him. I hitch a shoulder, let it fall again. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s paying the price for it now. So, in the end, I guess you still win.”

For a split-second, concern flickers across Evelyn’s face. She quickly schools it back into neutrality. “What are you talking about?”

“You know that divorce settlement you keep dragging out for as long as humanly possible? The one that could fund his entire tuition, if you stopped trying to get the money for yourself? It’s actually sort of funny, I’m sure you’ll get a real kick out of this—he can’t live without it! He’s got just enough cash to make his tuition payment next month, and then he’s down to being shit poor. Can’t pay his rent, won’t let me pay it for him. Each one of his tuition payments is about four grand, so hey, fuck if I know how he’s going to pay for the last two. Hell, I’m surprised he can even afford to eat, all things considered. So, I guess you’re getting your way, aren’t you? A couple months from now, he’s got no choice but to come crawling back here, begging your forgiveness. That is, of course, if he even sticks around long enough for that to happen.”

“Sticks around—”

“Oh, sorry, was that too much of a euphemism for you?” I say. “I meant to say, he’ll have to beg for your forgiveness, provided he doesn’t try to kill himself before then.”

The blood drains from Evelyn’s face. For the first time since we met, she and I are on the same wavelength, feeling the same clench of fear in our guts. The only thing she and I have ever had in common is our love for Travis, and for so long, I’ve doubted that she even felt that anymore. Right now, though, seeing that look on her face—I know that she’s as scared for him as I am.

I swallow, and when I speak again, my voice is still more hoarse than I’d like it to be. “Please, Ev. I know you hate me, and trust me, I hate you, too. But I love your son. I just want him to be okay, and he’s not. It doesn’t matter that he’s living with somebody you hate, alright? Call him. Talk to him. He’s your son, and he’s suffering, so just fucking call him, okay? Because even if you don’t want your kid anymore, he still needs you to be his mom.”

As big as this house is, it feels too small for me and Evelyn and everything I’ve just said. I turn to the door.

“Wait,” she says suddenly. I glance over my shoulder at her, but all she does is hold up a hand, signaling me to remain still as she retreats across the room. She repeats the word at least twice more, then disappears to the kitchen for long enough that I begin to wonder if she has somehow forgotten I’m here. Minutes tick by in fives and tens, but I still don’t move. When she finally returns, she is holding an envelope. She presses it into my hand and says, “Here. This is for him.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s for him,” she repeats. “It’s what he… needs. I think.”

I want to say, you have no idea what he needs, you clueless bitch, but I get the feeling that might be considered crossing the line. Instead of saying that, I just nod.

“You give that to him,” she says, “and now, you get the hell out of my house.”

I don’t dare push my luck by trying to stick around after that. The envelope isn’t sealed, which is perfect—saves me the trouble of finding a way to open it without it being obvious, but gives me the chance to make sure this isn’t something I need to hide from Travis. Halfway down the street, I pull over to the side of the road, put the car in park, turn my hazard lights on, and open the letter.

Dear Travis,

On that night three and a half years ago, when you tried to take your own life, it was your sister who found you, barely breathing, unconscious on your bedroom floor, an empty pill bottle next to you. She was the one who had to call the ambulance, because I could not remember how to move. All I could do was hold you in my arms and cry, because I was so afraid of losing my little boy. That is what you are to me, Travis, and that is what you will always be—my precious, beloved little boy.

When I think about the things you have experienced in the past year, I am sick with grief over how I am sure you have suffered. I blame myself for much of that suffering, and I blame that boy for much of the rest. Every mother dreams that her children will lead good lives. She dreams that they will grow up to be bright and and kind, that they will be healthy and happy. I know that you will never be happy with that boy. He is sick; he is mentally unbalanced, and he is deeply addicted to drugs and alcohol, and I fear for what your life will be if you stay with him. If he is sober now, it is only a matter of time before he falls back on his old habits, and I worry that he will hurt you, emotionally or physically. People who have been abused often become abusers themselves. I cannot bear to be part of your life as long as you insist on endangering yourself by being involved with someone so horrible. I cannot bear to see you experiencing the pain I know that he has inflicted upon you.

I do not believe that someone as troubled as that boy can be “fixed” after such a short time in rehab, especially in consideration of the fact that he was clearly disturbed even before he became a drug abuser. Travis, I know you believe that you are in love with that boy, but it is not real. The fact that you believe your relationship was consensual is only proof of how much he traumatized you. You were an innocent, inexperienced young boy, and he took advantage of that. He seduced you, and he tricked you into believing that his twisted fixation on you was true love. It is not. That boy is incapable of love. He does not love you, and you do not love him. I know that, had you not met him, it would never have occurred to you to experiment with a homosexual lifestyle. It is not in your nature. You are not like him, or any of the rest like him. You are not promiscuous. You are not a drug abuser. You are not a predator. You are not diseased.

I know in my heart that you will one day get married and have a family of your own. When you yourself become a father, you will understand the immense and unshakable love that a parent has for a child, and you will finally understand why I have tried to protect you in the ways that I have. I love you and your sister more than life itself, and I am proud to be the mother of two wonderful children. You are an intelligent, kind-hearted, hardworking, handsome, ambitious young man. My greatest wish is that you will be happy and live a good life. Please consider the things I have said to you here. When you are ready to talk again, I would love nothing more than to hear from you.

I love you always.

Mom

Inside the envelope, there’s another slip of paper. I tip it out onto my lap and stare down at it. It’s a check for eight thousand dollars, made out to Travis, with the word ‘tuition’ printed in the memo space. For the first time all day, I can breathe.

Jamie’s Cadillac is parked outside my house when I get back to New York a few hours later. When I let myself into the house, he and Travis are hanging out in the living room, watching some movie on TV. Travis levels me with a tired and wholly unimpressed look; any hope I’d had of him not realizing that I was responsible for Jamie’s presence disappears.

“Hello there,” Jamie says.

“Hi,” I say. “Go away.”

“Don’t be rude,” Travis warns, but Jamie rolls to his feet without even a hint of reluctance. He gives me a hug that’s more of a squeeze than anything, kisses me on the cheek, and lets himself get locked out. Travis raises his eyebrows at me. “Have I ever told you that you’ve got the subtlety of a swift kick to the nuts?”

“Probably, yeah,” I say. I thrust the envelope towards him. “This is for you.”

He frowns but reaches for it anyway. “Who’s it from?”

“Your mother,” I say. He freezes. I don’t have time for that shit. I shove the envelope into his hand, push it closer and closer until his muscles start to work well enough for him to open it.

I don’t know how many times Travis reads the letter; I think he might just be staring at the paper after a while. I join him on the couch and sit in absolute silence, tucked against his side. When he finally straightens up and looks at me, his eyes are wide enough that I can see the whites all the way around the blue of his irises. “And this is… this is real? My mom really wrote this?”

“Couldn’t make it up if I tried,” I say.

He looks back at the letter and traces the words with the tips of his fingers. He admits, “I don’t know whether I should be moved by the parts at the beginning and the end, or furious over everything in the middle.”

I reach over his shoulder and fold the letter over on itself until only the first paragraph and the last are visible. With her words about me tucked safely out of sight, all Travis can see is his mom’s love for him—her fear of losing him, her grief over his depression, her dreams of him giving her grandchildren someday, her hope that he will be happy. I tap my thumb against her sign-off. “This is the only part that matters. Well, that, and the, uh—” I reach into the envelope and fish out the check.

Travis stares down at it. He looks like he’s going to throw up, cry, or both. His grip is shaking on the check, but it’s the stupid letter that draws his attention again. “I can’t remember the last time my mom told me she loves me. You know, other than this?” He lifts the paper; it trembles in his fingers. “But she actually said it. She said she loves me. And it’s…” He has to clear his throat, and still his voice crackles into a whisper when he finishes, “I thought she didn’t anymore.”

I thought so, too, but I’d die before saying that to him. After all the cruel things Evelyn has said to Travis in the last year—all the times she has called him a faggot, or told him that he was a disappointment to her, or said she was disgusted by him—I find it hard to believe she cares about him at all. But when he turns to face me again, he looks so relieved and so hopeful that I have no choice but to try to smile back.

That’s all it takes, and then he’s there, crushing our bodies together and gripping my shirt almost tightly enough to tear it. His face is buried against my neck, and all he can say, over and over, is, “Thank you. I can’t believe you did this for me, I can’t believe you went to talk to her. Thank you, G.”